MY     1 
MOTHER 

AND  I 


E-G-STERN 


•, 


m 


m 


MY  MOTHER  AND  I 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK  •   BOSTON  •   CHICAGO  •  DALLAS 
ATLANTA  •   SAN  FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  LIMITED 

LONDON  •    BOMBAY  •   CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA.  Ln>. 

TORONTO     , 


MY   MOTHER  AND   I 


BY 

E.  G.  STERN 


WITH  A  FOREWORD  BY 

THEODORE  ROOSEVELT 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

1917 

All  rights  reserved 


Copyright,   1916, 
BY  THE  CURTIS  PUBLISHING  COMPANY. 


COPYRIGHT,  1917, 
BY  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

Set  up  and  electrotyped.     Published,  June,  1917. 


TO 

LEON  STERN 


428437 


FOREWORD 

Sagamore  Hill. 

This  is  a  really  noteworthy  story  —  a  pro 
foundly  touching  story  —  of  the  Americaniz 
ing  of  a  young  girl,  who  between  baby 
hood  and  young  womanhood  leaps  over  a 
space  which  in  all  cultural  and  humanizing 
essentials  is  far  more  important  than  the  dis 
tance  painfully  traversed  by  her  fore-fathers 
during  the  preceding  thousand  years.  When 
we  tend  to  grow  disheartened  over  some  of 
the  developments  of  our  American  civiliza 
tion,  it  is  well  worth  while  seeing  what  this 
same  civilization  holds  for  starved  and  eager 
souls  who  have  elsewhere  been  denied  what 
here  we  hold  to  be,  as  a  matter  of  course, 
rights  free  to  all  —  although  we  do  not,  as 
we  should  do,  make  these  rights  accessible  to 
all  who  are  willing  with  resolute  earnestness 
to  strive  for  them.  I  most  cordially  com 
mend  this  story. 

THEODORE  ROOSEVELT. 


MY  MOTHER  AND  I 


MY  MOTHER  AND  I 

I 

THE  mere  writing  of  this  account  is  a 
chain,  slight  but  never  to  be  broken; 
one  that  will  always  bind  me  to  that  from 
which  I  had  thought  myself  forever  cut  off. 
For  I  am  writing  not  only  of  myself.  In 
myself  I  see  one  hundred  thousand  young 
men  and  women  with  dark  eyes  aflame  with 
enthusiasm,  or  blue  eyes  alight  with  hope. 
In  myself,  as  I  write  this  record,  I  see  the 
young  girl  whose  father  plucked  golden 
heavy  oranges  in  Italian  gardens,  the  maiden 
whose  mother  worked  on  still  mornings  in 
the  wide  fields  of  Poland,  the  young  man 
whose  grandmother  toiled  in  the  peat-bogs 
of  Ireland.  I  am  writing  this  for  myself 
and  for  those  who,  like  me,  are  America's 
foster-children,  to  remind  us  of  them,  through 


'i;.;?i.^^ 
o  T'H  ET? 


AND     I 


pioneer  courage  the  bright  gates  of 
this  beautiful  land  of  freedom  were  opened 
to  us,  and  upon  whose  tumuli  of  grey  and 
weary  years  of  struggle  we,  their  children, 
rose  to  our  opportunities.  I  am  writing  to 
those  sons  and  daughters  of  immigrant  fa 
thers  and  mothers  who  are  now  in  America, 
to  those  who  will  come  after  this  devastating 
war  to  America,  and  to  those  who  will 
receive  them. 

i[  am  a  college  woman.  My  husband  is 
er^ged  in  an  honourable  profession.  Our 
horfte  is  unpretentious  but  pretty,  and  is  situ 
ated  in  a  charming  old  suburb  of  an  Ameri 
can  city  where  attractive  modern  residences 
stand  by  the  side  of  stately  old  Colonial 
houses,  as  if  typifying  young  America  in  the 
shadow  of  old  America.  Our  work  has  been 
shifting  us  over  the  country's  face;  we  have 
been  in  the  Gulf  States,  in  the  Middle  West, 
in  New  York.  Until  now  we  have  never 
lived  near  my  former  home  where  my  father 
and  mother  still  are.  Perhaps  I  should 
never  have  seen  into  mother's  heart,  into  her 
life  as  related  to  my  own,  if  she  had  not  come 

[12] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

last  winter  to  visit  us.  That  brief  visit  of 
mother's  brought  back  old  pictures.  .  .  . 

Those  old  pictures!  Somehow  they  had 
all  been  wiped  out  from  my  mind  by  the  beau 
tiful  new  things  in  my  life.  I  am  so  happy, 
so  blessed.  We  live  simply,  my  husband, 
our  boy,  and  I.  We  have  enough  to  keep  us 
unembittered.  Our  friends  are  men  and 
women  who  are  busy  with  the  making  of 
worth-while  American  homes,  with  the  inter 
ests  of  American  politics,  and  with  literature 
and  art.  Our  evenings  are  full  of  music  or 
good  plays  or  pleasant  society.  Sometimes 
my  husband  and  I  plan  some  work  which  we 
do  together.  All  our  days  are  crowded  to 
the  full  with  plans  and  activities  which,  we 
hope,  are  worth-while  not  only  to  us,  but  to 
others. 

It  may  be  because  everything  is  so  normal 
in  my  life  that  I  cannot  think  of  myself  as  a 
"  problem  " ;  I  cannot  think  of  my  mother  as 
a  "  problem."  Part  of  our  work  during  the 
past  six  years  has  been  in  the  settlement  house, 
in  the  playground,  in  the  night  school.  The 
young  people  I  have  met  there  have  come  to 

[13] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

me  with  their  problem,  the  problem  of  "  how 
to  be  American."  I  had  never  thought  in  all 
those  last  six  years  that  there  was  a  relation 
ship  between  them  and  me.  It  is  six  years 
since  I  left  home;  it  is  six  years  since  my  life 
has  been  made  over  again.  With  my 
mother's  coming  then  fell  open  the  door 
closed  upon  the  past.  It  does  not  lie  in  my 
power  to  tell  how  strange  it  seemed  to  me  to 
look  back. 


[14] 


II 


I  REMEMBER  best  of  all  a  room  we 
called  the  u  kitchen  "  in  the  ghetto  of  a 
city  in  the  middle  west.  The  ghetto  of  that 
city  is  part  of  a  sorry  district  which  I  shall 
call  "  Soho."  Mother  tells  me  that  I  was 
two  years  and  one-half  old,  as  old  as  my  little 
son  now  is,  when  my  infant  sister  Fanny, 
Mother,  and  I  came  to  that  kitchen  twenty-five 
years  ago  to  join  my  father.  We  came  from 
a  little  cottage  in  a  small  Russian  Polish  town 
to  the  ghetto  of  an  American  city. 

We  called  our  room  the  "  kitchen," 
although  it  was  the  one  and  only  room  in  our 
new  "  home."  It  opened  into  a  narrow  alley 
from  which  stairs  led  up  to  a  courtyard.  In 
that  day  there  were  no  inconvenient  housing 
laws,  and  a  clever  landlord  had  placed  board 
flooring  in  a  cellar,  partitioned  it  off,  and 
rented  it  to  immigrant  families.  Our  kitchen 
[IS] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

was  usually  damp  because  water  (rain  or 
"  clothes-water  ")  would  persist  in  following 
the  laws  of  gravity  with  a  stupid  invariability, 
and  the  result  was  that  on  rainy  days,  and  on 
wash  days  in  the  court  above  us,  our  kitchen 
was  frequently  swamped.  Fanny,  the  new 
American  baby  Mary,  and  I,  quite  filled  the 
tiny  room.  In  addition  there  were  a  gas 
stove,  a  table,  a  huge  book-case  holding 
father's  many,  many  Hebrew  books,  two 
chairs,  a  trunk  covered  with  steerage  labels,  a 
cot,  a  box,  a  cradle,  a  big  kitchen  clock,  and  a 
stove-pipe. 

"  Stove-pipe  "  may  be  a  misleading  name. 
When  father  first  arrived  in  America  he 
became  rabbi  of  a  tiny  town.  His  congrega 
tion,  eager  to  emulate  their  American  neigh 
bours,  insisted  that  he  wear  silk  hat  and  frock 
coat.  Father  absolutely  refused  to  consider 
the  frock  coat;  it  seemed  hideous  to  him  after 
the  scholarly  kaftan  or  gown  which  he  had 
worn  as  a  scholar  in  Russia.  But  poverty 
drove  disinclination  partially  into  hiding,  and 
he  was  forced  to  go  about  the  town,  a  timid 
young  fellow  in  his  conspicuous  silk  hat. 
[16] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

With  his  next  congregation  he  adroitly 
forestalled  their  intention  to  have  him  again 
don  the  hated  silk  hat  by  confiding  to  them 
that  his  suit  was  so  shabby  that  he  required  a 
new  one  to  go  with  the  silk  hat.  That  meant 
a  larger  salary.  He  was  not  asked  to  wear 
the  silk  hat.  Mother  thriftily  decided  that 
so  valuable  a  thing  as  the  "  stove-pipe  "  (that 
was  what  the  silk  hat  was  called  in  Soho) 
must  not  be  wasted.  So  in  my  childhood 
father's  silk  hat  filled  the  curious  but  useful 
function  of  holding  the  family  onions.  I 
always  thought  silk  hats  were  called  u  stove 
pipes  "  because  they  stood  behind  the  stove, 
where  mother  kept  ours. 

More  interesting  to  us  than  the  stove-pipe 
was  our  kitchen  clock.  In  the  eyes  of  our 
neighbours  the  clock  possessed  not  only  qual 
ity  worthy  of  favourable  notice,  for  its  er 
ratic  hour  strokes  never  would  conform  to  the 
strict  rules  observed  by  less  original  clocks. 
But  to  us  children  our  clock  was  part  of  the 
family  life.  Moreover,  on  its  glass  door  was 
painted  a  figure,  and  about  that  figure  there 
was  a  story.  A  friend  of  father's  had  seen 

[17] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

the  figure  represented  on  its  door.  When 
father's  friend  had  come  to  America  he  and 
the  others  had  travelled  days  upon  days  with 
only  blank  seas  before  their  eyes.  But  one 
morning  they  heard  a  cry,  "Land!"  He 
looked  out  and  all  he  could  see  was  the  line 
of  the  harbour,  and  a  lady,  a  magnificent  lady 
who  stood  as  tall  and  as  stately  as  did  the 
countess  at  home.  Behind  her  was  the 
expanse  of  the  sky,  above  her  was  the  sun,  and 
all  the  great  sea  flowed  to  her  feet.  He 
pointed  to  her.  A  man  cried  joyfully,  "  The 
Lady  of  Liberty  —  America  !  "  That  lady 
was  the  lady  painted  on  the  door  of  our  clock. 
"  And  I,  then  mother,  and  Fanny,  and  you  too 
saw  her,"  father  would  add. 

My  own  baby  mind  had  retained  no  image 
or  memory  of  the  Lady  of  Liberty.  From 
the  story,  however,  I  always  imagined  the 
entrance  to  America  as  a  gleaming,  vast  ex 
panse  of  water  where  tall  ships  came  sailing 
in,  to  stop  directly  before  Bartholdi's  great 
statue  of  Liberty,  that  welcomes  strangers  at 
the  gate  of  America. 

[18] 


Ill 


WHEN  I  had  just  turned  four  my  par 
ents  sent  me  to  learn  Hebrew. 
Even  at  that  early  age  father  began  to  pre 
pare  me  for  my  destiny,  to  be  the  wife  of  a 
rabbi  or  a  scholar,  and  so  to  continue  in 
America  the  tradition  of  both  his  and 
mother's  families,  in  which  there  have  been 
scholars  and  rabbis  for  generations. 

In  our  kitchen  in  Soho  father  would  sit  at 
the  table,  his  cheeks  cupped  in  his  palms,  an 
open  book  before  him,  until  mother  stepped 
near  and  said  something  very  quietly  to  him, 
or  touched  his  haggard,  bearded  face  with  her 
worn  hand.  Thereat  father  would  lift  his 
deep-set  eyes  to  her.  Often  in  the  evenings 
father's  friends  came  in,  bearded  men  much 
older  than  he.  They  spoke  of  their  "  jobs  " 
in  shops,  or  described  to  father  long  hours 
spent  in  carrying  great  pedlars'  sacks 
through  the  little  towns  nearby.  They  would 

[19] 


MY.     MOTHER     AND     I 

straighten  bent  shoulders,  and  sigh.  Then 
they  settled  themselves  about  father.  It 
would  be  close  and  hot  in  the  little  room, 
where  we  were  all  so  crowded  that  we  could 
barely  move  without  jostling  one  another. 
But  the  men  chanted  aloud  in  clear  voices,  and 
father's  face  became  illumined  as  he  read 
aloud  from  the  Talmud  to  them.  We  chil 
dren  played  quite  silently,  huddled  between 
the  table  and  the  stove,  and  mother  sat  at  her 
work. 

Father  would  be  very  tired  when  he  came 
home  from  his  work.  "  This  is  Columbus' 
land,"  he  would  say  wearily.  He  found  that 
the  rabbinate  did  not  pay  enough  for  the 
needs  of  his  growing  family,  and  he  was  com 
pelled  to  look  for  manual  work,  work  un- 
suited  to  his  slight  student's  frame,  and  to  his 
scholastic  trainng.  When  two  years  ago  I 
saw  "  Bunty  Pulls  the  Strings,"  I  was  startled 
to  note  how  much  alike  were  those  Scotch 
folk  and  my  father  in  their  intensity,  their 
sombre  idealism,  their  religious  inflexibility, 
their  hidden  tenderness.  Only  mother 
seemed  able  to  strike  the  depths  of  father. 

[20] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

I  can  never  remember  my  mother  in  my 
childhood  in  any  other  than  one  of  two 
positions,  standing  at  the  stove  cooking,  or 
sitting  in  the  corner;  her  foot  rocking  the 
cradle,  and  her  hands  stitching,  stitching. 
Mother  eked  out  the  family  income  by  making 
aprons  —  by  hand !  A  neighbour,  Mrs. 
Stone,  peddled  them.  Mother  was  then 
twenty-seven  years  old,  as  old  as  I  now  am. 
On  rare  occasions  when  mother  was  obliged 
to  leave  the  house  she  would  tie  Fanny  to 
one  leg  of  the  table,  and  me  to  the  other. 
It  was  most  uncomfortable  all  around,  and 
especially  to  the  neighbours,  for  we  two  chil 
dren  protested  with  the  full  power  of  our 
lungs  until  mother  would  return.  It  was  not 
often  that  mother  went  out  of  the  kitchen. 

At  dusk  we  would  sit  in  the  little  room  and 
mother  would  tell  us  of  the  garden  "  at 
home,"  of  the  apple  trees,  and  of  the  "  wald," 
or  wood,  with  the  spring  flowing  through  it. 
"  At  home  "  they  had  trees  everywhere,  and 
cows  simply  rolled  in  grass.  There  we  chil 
dren  had  had  cow's  milk  and  goat's  milk 
every  day,  while  here  as  I  knew  (for  I  helped 

[21] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

mother  to  do  it)  we  diluted  the  milk  with 
water  that  there  might  be  enough  to  go 
around.  Mother  described  to  us  the  goat 
which  was  so  tame  that  it  followed  her;  we 
knew  the  story  of  the  uncle  who  always  said 
that  he  would  die  were  he  to  drink  goat's 
milk,  and  how  one  day  mother  placed  a  bowl 
of  goat's  milk  before  him,  and  he  drank  it 
and  asked  for  more.  "  That  means  that  one 
must  not  dislike  anything  to  eat,"  mother  told 
us.  We  knew  of  the  time  when  father  came 
to  visit  mother,  and  how  he  and  she  walked  by 
the  brook  in  the  companionship  of  the  staid 
chaperon.  Father  had  been  too  shy  to  utter 
a  word  "  going  or  back,"  and  mother  had 
almost  "  died  trying  to  keep  her  tongue  still 
also,"  lest  her  suitor,  so  proper  and  modest, 
might  think  her  bold.  On  hot  days,  when  we 
sat  stifling  and  listless  in  our  kitchen,  mother 
would  make  us  laugh  by  saying,  "  But  you 
should  see  the  spring  at  home,  children.  You 
would  splash  in  it  —  so !  —  and  so !  "  We 
would  ask,  "  How  big  is  the  spring,  mam- 
mele?  As  big  as  —  a  wash-tub?"  And 
then  suddenly  mother  would  look  away,  and 

[22] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

smile  "  a  crooked  smile,"  after  the  quaint 
jargon  phrase,  a  smile  only  on  her  lips.  She 
would  say,  "  Better  run  upstairs  outside.  It 
is  cooler  in  the  alley." 

Father  never  saw  the  tears  which  filled 
mother's  eyes  on  those  occasions. 

It  was  not  father  alone  who  never  saw 
tears  in  mother's  eyes.  We  children  knew 
that  whatever  happened  in  our  home  not  one 
word  might  we  disclose  to  our  neighbours. 
For  if  we  did,  mother  assured  us  with  the 
greatest  solemnity,  grandfather  and  grand 
mother  in  Poland  might  hear  of  it.  And 
that  would  be  dreadful,  we  comprehended, 
though  we  did  not  know  why.  No  one  who 
came  down  to  our  kitchen  knew  whether  there 
was  black  bread  in  the  cupboard,  and  milk 
for  us  children.  Before  supper  the  hucksters 
would  gather  in  the  alley  to  sell  in  Soho  the 
wares  left  from  sales  in  better  neighbour 
hoods.  We  would  hold  fast  to  mother's 
apron,  unable  to  remove  our  gaze  from  the 
delicious  turnips  and  carrots  and  potatoes 
lying  in  the  wagons.  We  waited  for  mother 
to  ask  the  huckster,  as  she  pointed  to  a 

[23] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

vegetable,  "  How  much  is  this?'*  Some 
times  she  would  buy  potatoes  and  carrots,  to 
cook  them  into  a  sweet,  thick  soup  for  us. 
But  at  other  times,  when  the  huckster  replied 
to  mother's  inquiry,  she  would  say,  pleasantly, 
"  No,  I  do  not  need  any  to-day."  Those 
words  meant,  we  children  knew,  that  we 
would  have  bread  and  diluted  milk  for  sup 
per.  We  wondered  why,  simply  because  the 
huckster  named  a  sum,  mother  would  tell  him 
that  we  did  not  need  any  to-day ! 

One  day  there  was  a  great  knocking  at  the 
door  of  our  kitchen  and  a  huge  voice  boomed 
out,  "  Hey!  Hey!" 

Mother  rushed  to  the  door.  There  at  the 
foot  of  the  steps  leading  down  from  the  street 
stood  a  ruddy-cheeked,  laughing  fellow,  a 
strange  huckster  whom  we  had  never  seen  in 
the  neighbourhood  before. 

The  apron  mother  held  fell  to  the  floor. 

"  Why,  it's  Miss  Sarah,"  cried  the  strange 
huckster. 

"  And  you're  Simeon  the  stable  boy,"  said 
mother  kindly. 

We  children  listened  as  he  told  mother  of 

[24] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

his  trip  to  America,  of  his  success  at  huckster 
ing,  of  his  mother  who  had  been  a  servant  of 
grandmother's.  Then  he  stopped.  Mother 
said  nothing.  The  huckster  looked  at  us, 
then  his  gaze  pierced  into  the  dimness  of  our 
kitchen.  His  big  face  grew  redder  and 
redder.  He  stammered  out:  'Won't  you 

—  wouldn't  you,  Miss  —  take  some  potatoes 

—  you  needn't  pay  me  —  until  — " 
Mother  stood  up  so  straight,  her  cheeks 

grew  pink,  and  her  eyes  snapped.  "  We  do 
not  need  any  to-day,"  she  said.  "  I  am 
sorry.  But  you  may  come  next  week !  " 

Sometimes  this  attitude  of  mother's 
brought  us  into  such  uncomfortable  situa 
tions.  For  example,  there  was  one  holiday 
when  mother  and  father  had  been  saving  for 
days,  and  the  cupboard  was  full  of  an  unex 
ampled  store  of  apples  and  matzos  and  even 
raisin  wine.  There  was  also  a  wealth  of 
potatoes.  It  seemed  that  there  were  to  be 
actual  banquets  in  the  days  to  come.  Then, 
unexpectedly,  "  right  from  the  sky,"  came 
three  countrymen  of  mother's.  For  days 
they  had  not  eaten,  they  said ;  they  had  known 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

the  generosity  of  her  father  in  the  past.  Not 
one  moment  did  mother  hesitate.  She  gave 
us  children  a  glance,  half  merry,  half  aghast, 
and  set  before  the  visitors  —  the  holiday 
feasts.  They  were  hungry!  We  children 
watched  them  fascinated.  They  spoke  of 
strange  cities  where  they  had  been.  They 
told  tales  which  at  other  times  would  have 
kept  us  with  mouths  agape  about  them.  But 
all  that  my  sisters  and  I  could  see  were  the 
heaped  dishes  growing  emptier  and  emptier 
—  until  they  were  quite  empty.  Mother 
said,  scraping  the  copper  pot,  "  Will  you  have 
more?"  But  they  had  had  enough.  They 
left  with  many  a  word  of  thanks.  One  was 
to  enter  a  cantorship  in  a  city  in  the  west. 
One  was  to  become  a  pedlar.  One  was  to 
"  work  for  "  his  brother.  To  each  mother 
wished  god-speed.  Then  she  gathered  us 
about  her,  and  looked  from  one  child  to  the 
other.  Presently  she  said  cheerily,  "  A  clear 
conscience  is  better  than  a  full  stomach." 
And  we  had  weak  tea  and  metzos  during  the 
feasts  of  Passover. 

[26] 


IV 


WHEN  I  was  old  enough  I  helped 
mother  to  sew,  I  rocked  the  babies, 
and  I  played  hopscotch,  "  cat-and-dog,"  and 
the  other  games  of  the  street  with  the  boys 
about  us.  Much  of  my  child-life  before  I 
entered  public  school  was  spent  in  joyous 
running  and  climbing.  My  gentle  uncle 
would  say,  "  Play  now,  childie,  you  must  sor 
row  later/'  words  which  he  and  father  and 
mother  seemed  to  understand  together. 

Until  I  went  to  school  all  my  playmates 
lived  in  the  alley  near  us..  I  felt  very 
superior  to  the  timid,  pale  little  girls.  But 
with  the  little  boys  I  would  play  "  stick-up  " 
with  a  rusty  pen-knife  on  the  broken  wooden 
door-steps,  and  run  like  the  wind  over  clut 
tered  pavements. 

Playing  was  forbidden.  It  was  in  the  eyes 
of  the  wise  adults  in  our  courtyard  a  waste  of 

[27] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

time.  Our  neighbours  permitted  their  chil 
dren  to  play  only  on  suffrance,  and  most  of 
my  companions  understood  that  any  child  of 
seven  or  eight  caught  frolicking  merited  pun 
ishment  from  a  tired  and  harassed  mother. 
We  children  knew  that  throwing  ball  endan 
gered  the  property  of  the  tenement  owners, 
that  skipping  rope  obstructed  passage,  and  if 
we  threw  a  particularly  clever  "  cat "  a 
wagon  was  sure  to  come  tearing  down  the 
cobble-stones.  Often  we  barely  escaped  with 
our  lives. 

"  But  it's  so  crowded  indoors,"  mother 
would  say  quietly  to  her  neighbours  when  they 
scolded  children  tumbling  out  from  hot  tene 
ment  rooms  all  about  us.  And  the  mothers 
would  wish  for  the  ideal,  the  unattainable : 
44  Why  can't  little  folk  sit  still!  " 

It  would  have  been  impossible  for  me  to 
sit  still.  I  was  constantly  dancing  out  of  the 
house,  or  running  into  it  to  tell  mother  what 
I  had  done  in  the  alley.  I  would  tell  her  all 
the  thrilling  things  that  we  had  done  in  play, 
sure  of  her  understanding,  anxious  for  the 
twinkling  light  of  laughter  in  her  eyes.  She 

[28] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

was  as  much  part  of  my  play  as  any  child  in 
the  street. 

I  have  not  described  mother,  or  mammele, 
as  we  call  her.  She  is  small  and  plump  and 
red-cheeked.  Her  eyes  are  black  and  danc 
ing.  Now  that  wrinkles  cross  her  cheeks  her 
pious  black  wig  seems  strange,  though  it  is 
actually  the  colour  of  her  own  silky,  black 
hair  beneath  it.  She  has  not  changed  in  all 
the  years,  except  to  grow  gayer,  jollier. 

By  our  neighbours  I  was  considered  a  wild 
thing,  a  tomboy,  badly  spoiled  by  my  mother. 
When  a  disapproving  matron  informed  her 
that  I  was  "  playing  again,"  she  would  come 
out  to  look  for  me,  and  she  would  say,  that 
all  might  hear,  "Aren't  you  ashamed!  A 
big  eight-year-old  almost!  You'll  get  it 
yet !  "  Thereupon  I  would  follow  her  into 
our  kitchen  in  great  meekness  of  attitude,  but 
with  my  pulse  quite  normal.  The  proprieties 
having  been  observed,  she  would  close  our 
door,  her  eyes  would  twinkle,  and  after  a 
moment  she  would  say,  "  You  had  better  chop 
the  farfal,  childie."  I  would  seat  myself 
beside  the  cradle,  rock  the  baby  with  one 

[29] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

foot,  hold  the  wooden  bowl  firmly  on  my  lap 
and  chop  the  stiff  dough  into  the  little  bits  of 
dough  which  mother  cooked  with  meat  as  a 
vegetable,  and  which  we  called  "  farfal." 
Mother  would  smile  to  Fanny  and  Mary  and 
me.  And  presently  she  would  tell  us  a  story 
with  a  moral  neatly  tucked  in. 


[30] 


DESPITE  mother's  clever  ruse  the  neigh 
bours  knew  very  well  of  her  deception 
and  they  by  no  means  shrank  from  express 
ing  their  disapproval.  However  it  was  dif 
ficult  to  hold  my  incurable  wickedness  against 
me,  for  as  mother  astutely  told  my  detractors, 
notwithstanding  my  American  propensity  for 
play,  I  wrote  the  best  Yiddish  letter  com 
posed  by  a  female  of  any  age  in  Soho;  I 
possessed  a  "  God's  gift  for  writing,  really," 
she  would  declare.  Indeed,  at  the  ripe  age 
of  eight  I  was  writing  most  of  the  love-letters, 
filial  letters,  marital  letters,  and  letters  of 
condolence  sent  from  Soho  to  Russia  by  our 
illiterate  neighbours.  After  I  entered  public 
school  I  conducted  their  English  correspond 
ence  also.  I  was  paid  two  cents  a  letter,  the 
paper  being  furnished  by  me. 

[The  hopes  and  sorrows  of  many  a  family 

[31] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

in  Soho  were  inextricably  twined  into  our  life. 
For  it  was  as  if  all  the  life  of  Soho  streamed 
through  our  little  kitchen,  through  mother's 
life  and  mine,  by  way  of  those  letters  which 
I  wrote  for  our  neighbours. 

By  far  the  larger  number  of  those  for 
whom  the  letters  were  written  were  women, 
for  it  was  only  the  very  rare  ghetto  female 
whose  parents  had,  in  her  childhood,  thought 
it  worth  while  to  expend  tuition  upon  the  edu 
cation  of  a  mere  girl.  The  men  who  were 
unlettered  felt  their  misfortune  keenly;  their 
epistles  were  oftener  written  in  the  friendly 
shelter  of  their  own  kitchens  than  at  our 
table,  where  they  would  be  obliged  to  stand 
abashed  before  the  gaze  of  my  father. 

For  the  men  I  invariably  wrote  in  the  even 
ings  after  they  returned  from  the  day's  ped 
dling  or  huckstering.  Many  of  their  letters 
could  not  have  been  written  at  all  had  not 
mother  been  at  hand  to  help  me.  Despite  a 
most  fluent  use  of  speech  during  every 
moment  of  their  lives,  the  mere  sight  of  my 
pen  transferring  their  words  indelibly  upon 
paper  seemed  to  give  them  an  extraordinary 

[32] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

affection  of  tongue  and  throat.  There  was 
Perez,  who  could  call  his  potatoes  louder 
than  any  huckster  in  Soho,  and  whose 
"  Women,  women,  ten  cents  a  peck!  "  was  a 
jest  heard  and  enjoyed  every  Thursday  by 
matrons  three  blocks  from  his  wagon.  Perez 
would  grow  hoarse  and  absolutely  witless  at 
sight  of  my  pen  travelling  over  the  paper.  I 
could  never  have  written  one  letter  for  him 
if  mother  had  not  translated  his  grunts  and 
embarrassed  blushes,  and  extracted  by  sym 
pathetic  questions  and  tactful  suggestions  the 
information  he  wished  to  send  to  his  father 
and  to  his  sweetheart  in  Europe.  "  I  tell  you 
it  takes  a  scholar's  daughter  to  look  paper  in 
the  face,"  he  would  declare  to  mother.  And 
mother,  yielding  the  compliment  to  me,  would 
say,  "  I  am  proud  to  have  a  scholar  as  a  hus 
band." 

Best  of  all  I  loved  to  write  for  the  women. 
The  men  merely  desired  me  to  tell  the  state 
of  their  health,  to  write  how  much  they  had 
"  been  raised  "  in  the  store  or  factory,  and 
to  end  with,  "  I  hope  we'll  be  together  soon." 
That  was  all.  Hucksters  and  tailors  and 

[33] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     1 

toby-makers  had  no  imagination,  I  discovered 
early.  But  it  was  different  with  their  sisters 
and  mothers  and  wives.  The  unmarried 
women  waited  until  after  shop-hours  to  have 
their  letters  written.  During  the  day  the 
matrons  would  come  in,  heavy  babies  in  their 
arms,  and  all  their  children,  my  playfellows, 
behind  them.  They  would  seat  themselves. 
They  would  tell  mother  of  the  new  spigots 
which  the  landlord  had  promised  all  the 
tenants  when  he  increased  their  rent;  they 
would  descant  upon  the  difficulties  they  en 
countered  in  making  their  boys  "  behave'*; 
boys  were  so  strangely  unmanageable  in 
America.  They  would  tell  of  the  grown 
daughter's  beau,  dwelling  particularly  upon 
his  earning  capacity  and  the  fact  that  he  "  was 
stylish,"  but  adding  apologetically  to  mother, 
"  I  guess  your  husband,  though,  might  look 
cross-eyed  upon  him.  He  —  doesn't  observe 
the  Sabbath."  Then  would  be  discussed  all 
the  deaths  in  the  ghetto,  and  the  women 
would  decide  who  would  volunteer  to  help 
care  for  the  children  of  the  bereaved  family 
while  the  older  folks  sat  in  mourning. 

[34] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

Mother  would  be  stitching  busily  all  the  time, 
and  nodding  her  head  in  sympathy,  or  with 
appreciation  of  a  jest,  or  in  disapproval. 
After  all  the  aspects  of  health,  economic  sit 
uations,  and  hopes  had  been  considered,  they 
would  say  to  me,  "  Have  you  time  maybe  to 
write  me  a  letter  to-day?  "  Thereupon  I 
would  take  down  the  bottle  of  ink,  the  pen, 
and  the  lined  paper.  Mother  would  draw 
closer  to  the  table,  the  neighbour  would  quiet 
her  children.,  and  I  would  begin  to  write. 

The  work  of  an  afternoon  followed. 
There  were  certain  definite  literary  require 
ments  which  I  should  never  have  thought  of 
neglecting  to  observe.  First  of  all  I  must  be 
sure  to  state  that  "  all  were  in  good  health," 
and  hoped  u  this  finds  the  receiver  in  the 
same."  Ten  lines  later,  as  if  the  report  of 
good  health  had  never  been  written,  I  would 
be  describing  with  minute  precision  the  ill 
nesses  of  the  children,  the  parents,  and  their 
friends.  Each  woman  wished  her  letter  to 
be  embroidered  with  philosophic  reflections, 
always  of  pessimistic  colour,  with  a  little 
resigned  phrase  now  and  then  interposed, 

[35] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

nullifying,  but  not  quite  nullifying,  the  sad 
ness.  What  they  desired  beyond  all  else  was 
to  have  their  letters  beautiful,  the  script  clear, 
"  like  print,"  and  the  pages  full  of  flowing 
idioms  so  that  their  missives  would  be  read 
with  admiration  in  the  quiet  little  European 
villages,  or  in  the  ghettos  of  American  cities. 

Though  mother  chided  me  for  it,  in  my 
heart  I  would  hope  for  letters  of  condolence, 
for  these  I  could  fill  with  the  sagest  reflec 
tions,  the  most  resigned  and  eloquent  com 
passion,  and  the  wisest  advice.  A  letter  to 
one  who  had  lost  his  position  or  who  had 
suffered  bereavement,  was  a  work  of  art.  I 
would  insert  quotations  which  I  had  heard 
father  repeat  from  the  Talmud.  With  all 
the  philosophy  of  nine  years  of  life  I  would, 
in  the  person  of  the  neighbour  for  whom  I 
wrote,  adjure  the  unhappy  one  to  follow  my 
precepts,  and  to  "  lift  his  heart." 

Writing  was  as  much  a  joy  to  me  as  play 
ing,  mother  truly  said.  Often  I  was  asked 
to  express  strange  things  which  I  could  only 
dimly  divine.  But  what  I  could  not  quite 
comprehend,  I  would  phrase  all  the  more 

[36] 


MY     MOTHER     A  N  D     I 

beautifully,  and  the  women,  I  marked  with 
wonder,  would  actually  admire  those  portions 
of  the  letter  more  than  any  other  part.  At 
each  paragraph  I  would  pause  to  read  aloud 
what  had  been  written.  Shaking  her  be- 
wigged  head,  our  neighbour  would  meet 
mother's  gaze.  She  would  exclaim  in  an  un 
dertone,  but  loud  enough  for  all  the  malignant 
spirits  to  hear  (lest  if  any  ill  befall  me  she  be 
blamed  for  it)  :  "  May  the  evil  eye  not 
strike  the  child!  "  And  when  in  the  replies 
from  Europe  the  professional  letter  writer 
there  would  tell  my  client :  "  Your  last 
epistle  was  read  from  house  to  house,  and 
people  licked  their  fingers  to  hear  it," 
mother's  pride  in  her  small  daughter  would 
brim  over  in  a  dimpling,  radiant  smile.  It 
never  occurred  to  her  that  the  letters  were  as 
much  her  accomplishment  as  mine. 

Sometimes  when  I  ran  down  into  the 
kitchen  from  my  play  or  from  school  mother 
would  look  up  from  her  work  to  say,  "  Is  this 
the  second  Tuesday  in  the  month?  "  And  if 
it  was  we  knew  that  a  letter  was  due  to  be  sent 
to  the  sister  of  Mrs.  K ,  the  practical 

[37] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

nurse.  Later  when  I  grew  older  there  was 
also  a  letter  to  be  written  on  the  first  Mon 
day  of  every  month  to  the  wife  of  Moishe 
the  bricklayer.  These  letters  were  written 
without  the  presence  of  the  senders  when  they 
could  not  spare  the  time  from  their  daily 
work.  However,  we  know  almost  as  well  as 
did  they  their  income,  their  health  and  their 
hopes;  and  so  frequently  it  happened  that 
mother  decided  quite  without  consulting  them 
how  much  to  tell  and  what  to  withhold  from 
their  relatives  far  away.  Pen  poised,  I 
waited  until  she  settled  the  knotty  problem: 

u  Ought  Moishe  B to  write  to  his  wife 

in  Russia  that  he  had  broken  his  leg  in  falling 
from  the  house  on  which  he  was  at  work?  " 
"  Yes,"  she  would  say,  "  Moishe  ought  to  tell 
his  wife  of  the  accident  because  that  will  ex 
plain  to  her  why  he  can  send  her  so  little 
money  this  month,  and  she  will  be  rejoiced  to 
hear  that  he  is  alive  and  not  even  crippled." 
But  when  I  inquired,  in  writing  the  letter  for 
Mrs.  Braun,  wife  of  the  rich  tailor,  "  Shall  I 
tell  her  mother  that  the  little  grandchild  is 
dead  of  the  children's  sickness?  "  mother  said 

[38] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

quickly,  "  No.  Death  casts  a  far  shadow." 
Of  all  the  letters  there  was  one  truly  diffi 
cult  to  do.  That  was  the  letter  sent  at  rare 
intervals  by  Polish  Anna  who  had  come  to 
America  from  mother's  native  town.  Anna 
always  had  a  half  dozen  little  Polacks  tagging 
after  her,  their  smudgy,  fair  faces  almost  as 
blonde  as  their  straight  flaxen  hair.  With 
her  arms  bare  to  the  elbow,  and  red  from 
soap  and  hot  water,  Anna  would  come  in  at 
noon,  while  her  clothes  dried  and  I  was  at 
home  for  the  school  lunch  hour. 

To  a  stranger  it  might  have  appeared  an 
impossible  undertaking  for  me  to  write  a 
letter  for  Anna.  She  knew  neither  Yiddish 
nor  English.  I  could  not  write  Polish  nor 
understand  it.  But  mother  devised  a  way: 
Anna  would  tell  her  in  Polish  what  she  wished 
to  say,  mother  would  translate  Anna's  Polish 
into  Yiddish  for  me,  and  I  would  write.  To 
express  her  simple  thoughts,  her  simple 
tragedies,  was  a  tremendously  complex  labour 
for  the  Polish  girl.  She  and  mother  would 
speak  for  many  moments  about  every  sen 
tence  which  I  wrote.  Ultimately  there  would 

[39] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

be  filled  two  pages.  The  letter  would  be  ad 
dressed  to  my  grandparents.  In  Poland 
grandmother  would  send  for  Anna's  mother, 
and  to  the  old  peasant  she  would  translate 
into  Polish  the  Yiddish  letter  from  Amer 
ica. 

But  I  dreaded  the  replies  to  Anna  much 
more  than  the  writing  of  her  letters.  Every 
week  she  would  ask  timidly,  "  Is  there  a  letter 
from  home?"  And  if  we  said  "  no  "  she 
would  just  bow  her  head,  but  if  we  replied 
"yes"  she  would  cry  "dobje!  dobje!  — 
good!  good!  "  Anna  laughed  and  wept  all 
the  way  through  the  reading  of  the  sentences. 
After  the  letter  had  been  read  to  her  she 
would  kiss  our  hands.  I  would  feel  so 
ashamed  to  have  her  kiss  our  hands.  My 
cheeks  would  grow  red  and  tears  would  fill 
my  eyes.  I  could  not  explain  to  my  parents 
but  it  seemed  to  me  that  through  Anna's  kiss 
ing  of  my  hand  both  Anna  and  I  became  small 
and  mean.  Very  gently  mother  would  pat 
my  head  as  she  told  me  that  it  would  make 
Anna  unhappy  indeed  were  we  to  forbid  her 
to  do  this;  she  would  be  humiliated,  fright- 

[40] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

cned,  thinking  that  we  were  no  longer 
friendly  to  her,  for  that  was  the  way  by 
which  she  had  been  taught  to  express  her  ap 
preciation  of  kindnesses.  "  And,"  mother 
would  add  with  a  wholesome  smile,  "  better 
wash  your  hands  next  time  before  Anna 
comes !  "  But,  although  I  laughed,  there 
lay  deep  in  me  a  sense  of  wrong  which  the 
years  and  repetition  did  not  wipe  out. 

In  writing  the  letters  for  our  neighbours 
there  was  one  topic  I  knew  that  each  one  was 
embarrassed  to  discuss  or  even  to  mention. 
That  topic  was  one  upon  which  mother 
admonished  me  I  must  inquire  in  a  whisper. 
"  How  much  shall  I  say  you  are  sending  this 
time?"  I  would  ask,  lowering  my  voice. 
And  the  reply  was  usually  murmured  into  my 
ear  that  none  of  my  playfellows,  their  chil 
dren,  might  hear  and  repeat.  Of  course, 
mother  told  me,  I  must  feel  it  was  a  matter  of 
honor  on  my  part  never  to  disclose  it.  The 
strange  part  of  this  reticence  was  that  there 
was  hardly  one  person  near  us  who  did  not 
"  send  to  Europe  "  some  small  sum  for  father 
or  brother  or  mother,  or  most  frequently  of 

[41] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

all,  for  wife  and  children.  Yet  any  sugges 
tion  that  would  indicate  a  need  for  the  money 
on  the  part  of  the  family  abroad  was  con 
sidered  a  personal  reflection  upon  the  dignity 
of  the  senders  by  those  very  poor  women  for 
whom  I  wrote.  The  woman  would,  when 
speaking  of  relations  in  Europe,  describe  her 
own  as  being  extraordinarily  wealthy.  Her 
father,  by  the  account  of  each,  had  given  his 
daughter  a  half  dozen  feather  beds,  chests  of 
copper  pots,  and  linens  stack  upon  stack, 
besides  six  dresses  made  of  material  so  strong 
it  would  last  "  to  the  fifth  generation,"  and 
of  course  a  huge  dowry!  They  had  not 
always  been  as  here,  they  would  assure 
mother,  while  they  used  the  expressive  speech 
of  eyes  weary  with  suffering  and  hands 
gnarled  with  toil.  Our  neighbours  would  say, 
"  Do  you  see  Mrs.  Brawnsky,  the  distiller's 
wife  ?  She  wears  silk  dresses  here  on  week 
days,  and  at  home  she  walked  barefoot  carry 
ing  water  from  the  town  well  to  my  father's 
house."  Mother  would  smile  a  bit  when  she 
heard  such  talk,  and  her  needle  flew  faster. 
But  one  day  father  was  present.  Though  it 

[42] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

was  a  mere  woman  speaking,  he  deigned  to 
address  her  for  her  good:  "  My  father  had 
small  worldly  possessions.  He  had  other 
riches.  His  riches  lay  in  God."  A  dead 
silence  ensued  until  presently  mother  spoke 
some  kindly  phrase  that  somehow  made  the 
air  light,  even  father  smiled,  and  I  continued 
writing  my  letter. 

From  our  kitchen  table  went  letters  into 
far  corners  of  the  world.  The  answers  came 
with  post-marks  of  Roumania  and  Hungary 
and  Russia  and  England.  By  the  time  we 
began  the  study  of  geography  in  school  I 
already  knew  from  my  letters  the  names  of 
places  about  which  our  teachers  told.  Lon 
don  and  Manchester  and  Chicago  and  New 
York  and  Boston  were  familiar  names  to 
mother  and  to  father  and  to  me.  But  to  my 
mind  all  cities  were  alike.  Those  who  re 
plied  to  letters  I  wrote  had,  it  appeared,  the 
same  troubles  (no  matter  in  which  city  or  on 
which  continent  they  lived)  as  had  the  neigh 
bours  next  door  to  us,  or  on  the  floor  above 
us. 

[43] 


VI 


THOUGH  my  intercourse  with  my 
elders  was  in  Yiddish,  in  the  street  we 
little  folk  spoke  a  curious  jargon  of  Yiddish 
and  English.  It  was  almost  a  dialect,  and 
later  as  a  big  girl  in  the  sixth  grade  I  once 
sorely  puzzled  the  teacher  by  spelling  bana 
nas  "  pennennies,"  that  being  the  Soho 
version  of  the  name  of  the  fruit.  In  Hebrew 
school  and  at  home  we  spoke  only  Yiddish, 
and  even  we  children  spoke  no  English  to  one 
another  until  we  had  entered  grammar 
school.  Our  prayers  we  spoke  in  Hebrew 
and  there  were  prayers  before  and  after 
meals,  in  the  morning,  at  bedtime,  on  Sab 
bath,  or  holy  days,  on  feast  and  fast  days, 
when  the  new  moon  appeared,  when  the  new 
month  began,  and  at  other  times  too  numer 
ous  to  mention. 

On    the    evening    when    the    new    moon 

[44] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

appeared  father,  coming  home  at  supper  time, 
would  take  me  out  into  the  narrow  courtyard. 
I  stood  at  his  side  while  he  waited  until  the 
clouds  of  factory  smoke  rolled  by,  permitting 
the  vision  of  the  small  silver  crescent,  delicate 
and  fine.  At  sight  of  that  curved  light  father 
uttered  a  blessing  and  my  lisping  child's 
Hebrew  echoed  his.  After  a  little  silence  he 
would  look  at  me  with  exalted  eyes,  and  he 
would  tell  me  that  on  the  moon  all  the  world 
gazed,  that  seas  rose  to  meet  her,  and  the 
years  were  wound  about  her  beautiful  path. 

I  knew  father  meant  that  the  years  were 
counted  by  the  movements  of  the  silver  moon. 
But  at  school  the  very  next  morning  I  would 
recite  to  my  teacher  from  our  geography  book 
the  fact  that  days  and  years  were  counted  by 
the  revolutions  of  the  sun ! 

I  learned  also  at  school  of  strange  things 
altogether  different  from  those  father  and 
mother  knew.  Indeed,  much  that  was  taught 
us  by  our  teacher  had  nothing  at  all  to  do  with 
the  little  kitchen  in  Soho. 

To  mother  it  was  a  constant  source  of  won 
der  that  we  children  were  not  only  permitted 

[45] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

to  go  to  free  school,  but  that  we  were  actually 
obliged  to  go.  She  remarked  upon  this  fre 
quently  to  one  of  her  close  friends,  Mrs. 
Brownstone.  Mrs.  Brownstone  herself 
would  speak  of  the  school  whither  her  second 
eldest  son  went  each  day.  We  knew  him 
well,  with  his  pale  face,  bent  forward,  and  a 
huge  pack  of  books  under  his  left  arm. 
Every  morning  I  would  watch  the  tall  boy 
walk  up  the  street,  turn  at  a  certain  corner, 
and  disappear.  He  would  stride  rapidly, 
looking  at  no  one,  his  "  nose  buried  in  his 
books,"  our  neighbours  said  respectfully. 
When  his  mother,  telling  my  mother  the 
wonders  of  her  son,  would  be  asked,  u  And 
what  will  he  be  ?  "  she  could  not  reply.  She 
really  did  not  know. 

I  too  came  to  wonder  what  he  would  "  be." 
One  day  his  mother  told  my  mother  that  he 
was  "  through,"  and  that  he  had  taken  "  first 
honour."  None  of  us  knew  what  that  meant, 
but  Soho  was  proud  of  him.  Then  he  left 
Soho  never  to  return.  The  others  forgot 
him.  But  to  me  he  was  always  a  mysterious 
figure,  the  first  figure  that  I  consciously 

[46] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

noticed  in  the  long  line  I  saw  in  the  years 
that  followed.  That  line  held  only  boys. 
They  strode  up  to  a  certain  corner,  turned, 
and  disappeared  from  sight.  I  could  not 
understand  what  they  found  just  around  that 
corner  beyond  the  last  tenement,  no  more  than 
I  understood  when  one  day  Mrs.  Brownstone 
announced  that  her  son  had  been  made  a  pro 
fessor  in  a  college  out  west.  It  seemed 
absurd  to  me ;  during  many  years  I  carried  a 
queer  picture  of  him  in  my  mind.  For  when 
I  asked  mother  what  it  meant,  she  had  said, 
equally  uncertain,  that  a  professor  was  a  man 
who  played  the  violin  at  weddings,  or  a 
doctor  who  required  a  larger  fee. 

Perhaps  there  are  now  many  in  Soho  who 
know  what  a  u  professor  "  and  "  college  " 
mean.  Soho  has  grown  to  be  much  bigger 
than  it  was  in  my  childhood,  even  bigger  than 
it  had  become  in  my  girlhood.  It  now  has 
night  schools,  and  a  library.  But  we  chil 
dren  of  that  day  had  not  even  the  cinema 
theatre,  to  which  our  parents  could  go,  and 
see,  together  with  their  children,  a  picture  of 
the  big  world  outside  the  ghetto,  and  so  learn 

[47] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

of  American  customs,  attitudes,  manners,  and 
standards,  no  matter  how  distorted.  We 
never  saw  the  interior  of  an  American  home, 
even  as  pictured  on  the  cinema  screen.  Our 
parents  read  no  American  literature,  they  had 
no  understanding  of  America.  I  did  not 
even  hear  of  the  progressive  group  in  the 
ghetto,  until  I  was  a  grown  girl;  they  were 
as  much  out  of  the  life  of  our  home  and  the 
homes  of  our  friends  as  if  they  did  not  exist. 
To  my  father  and  mother  all  the  universe 
was  bound  by  their  religious  affiliations  and 
by  memories  of  the  old  land  left  behind. 
There  was,  to  be  sure,  one  old  man  who  came 
in  sometimes  to  our  kitchen.  His  name  was 
Mazersky.  He  was  a  magnificent  figure, 
with  flowing  beard  and  deep  voice.  He  was 
full  of  strange  hungers  and  longings.  He 
read  queer  books,  the  more  queer  because 
they  were  printed  with  an  English  translation 
beside  the  jargon.  He  would  speak  fervently 
of  something  called  "  citizenship,"  and  he 
would  say  often,  "  I  wish  I  were  twenty  years 
younger."  He  died,  and  at  his  death  he  was 
studying  the  speech  of  the  country  which  he 

[48] 


MY     MOTHER,  AND     I 

felt  he  had  found  too  late.  He  had  no  part 
in  our  life,  though  he  touched  it.  By  the 
others,  struggling  with  the  immediate  prob 
lems  of  actual  suffering  caused  by  hunger  and 
lack  of  work,  he  was  thought  just  a  bit  odd. 
When  he  came  into  our  kitchen  mother  would 
stop  for  a  moment  in  her  work  to  serve  him  a 
cup  of  tea  before  she  sat  down  to  sew,  and  to 
listen  to  him.  But  when  one  day  I  almost 
spoke  to  him  he  turned  his  fiery  old  eyes  upon 
me,  and  his  voice  boomed  out,  "  Well,  do  you 
know  what  it  means  to  go  to  school?"  I 
dropped  my  books  and  ran  from  him  in  haste 
and  fear. 

On  Decoration  Day,  mother,  obeying  the 
request  of  my  teacher,  saved  a  nickel  for  me 
to  take  to  school.  For  that  nickel,  we  chil 
dren  heard,  flowers  were  bought.  We  would 
sit  in  school,  on  that  holiday,  waiting  primly 
in  our  seats  until  the  great  gong  rang;  at  that 
signal  all  the  twenty  school  rooms  emptied 
their  pupils  into  the  central  hall.  Up  the 
stairs  to  the  platform  we  children  saw  climb 
a  line  of  white  haired  men  in  blue  caps  that 
were  no  bluer  than  the  old  eyes  in  the 

[49] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

wrinkled  faces.  These  old  men  (as  I  re 
peated  to  mother  when  I  told  her  of  them) 
were,  our  teachers  said,  soldiers.  On  the 
platform,  in  front  of  them,  some  one  would 
make  a  "  speech."  And  finally  the  teachers 
sent  us  home.  I  would  rejoice  that  I  could 
help  mother  for  a  whole  half  day.  It  may  be 
that  our  instructors,  trying  to  teach  classes 
of  sixty  and  seventy,  meant  to  explain  to  us 
the  meaning  of  the  day,  its  association  with 
great  national  crises,  the  pathos  of  those  old 
men  who  had  given  both  body  and  possessions 
for  our  country,  and  for  the  principle  of  a 
great  man.  I  never  understood,  however. 
I  do  not  think  we  would  have  believed  it  had 
it  been  told  us  that  there  was  a  connection 
between  the  little  coloured  children  sitting 
next  to  us  in  the  big  central  hall  on  Memorial 
Day,  and  the  old  men  whom  we  rose  to 
honour. 

But  more  inexplicable  than  Decoration  Day 
was  July  4th.  It  was  a  day  full  of  excite 
ment  and  terror  to  our  parents,  who  kept 
guard  over  us  children  all  day  long.  Fire 
crackers  and  guns  were  the  celebration  of  this 
[50] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

day,  my  father  and  mother  knew.  There 
were  in  Soho  little  girls  and  boys  who  told  me 
unbelievable  tales  of  a  park,  where  on  July 
4th  giant  fire  crackers  flew  to  the  sky,  where 
McKinley's  face  appeared  in  gorgeous  fiery 
colors  upon  a  wooden  frame,  and  the  Ameri 
can  flag  burned  in  flame  against  the  darkness 
of  the  night. 

In  my  childhood  I  never  discovered 
whether  those  wonder  tales  of  flame  pictures 
were  true  or  not.  No  one  whom  I  knew  in 
the  ghetto  could  really  tell  me  why  July  4th 
was  singled  out  from  all  other  days  for  spe 
cial  observance,  least  of  all  my  own  parents. 
No  one  could  tell  me  why  the  flag  burned 
against  the  sky. 

Yet  the  American  flag  has  always  seemed 
to  me  a  personal  possession  as  if  I  had  been 
its  Betsy  Ross. 

Each  day  after  school  hours  I  went  to 
Hebrew  school;  Hebrew  school  was  in  the 
kitchen  of  a  friend  of  father's.  We  would 
sit,  fourteen  of  us,  about  the  table,  I  the  only 
girl.  In  unison  we  read  the  Hebrew,  in 
unison  translated  it.  Our  teacher  was  a 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

gentle  old  man  whom  we  sorely  tried,  we  chil 
dren  with  our  strange  American  disrespect. 
"  Oh,  you  American  children,"  he  would  say 
when  we  refused  to  remain  in  longer  on  hot 
summer  days,  the  tiny  room  being  full  of 
smoke,  of  the  smell  of  cooking,  and  the  odour 
of  our  fourteen  perspiring  little  bodies. 

Curiously  enough,  in  that  Oriental  at 
mosphere  of  the  Hebrew  school  I  learned 
what  America,  patriotism,  meant.  We  chil 
dren  tumbled  in  one  afternoon  full  of  mis 
chief.  We  found  our  teacher  in  tears,  his 
old  wife  beside  him  tearing  her  pious  wig  and 
wailing  aloud.  We  understood  dimly  that 
they  were  weeping  because  of  something 
which  their  youngest  son  Jake  had  done. 
Jake  had  enlisted  in  the  army.  All  the  little 
lads  were  speechless  before  the  wonder  of  it, 
and  the  big  boys  gathered  in  guards  of  silent 
honour  about  the  new  recruit.  I  asked  Jake, 
resplendent  in  his  bright  new  uniform  why 
he  wore  "  that."  He  replied  in  words  that 
expressed  in  the  simplest  terms  the  ideal  of 
citizenship :  "  I'm  going  away,  childie.  I'm 
going  to  work  and  fight  and  maybe  to  die  for 

[*»] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

America."  And  it  was  even  so;  for  Jake 
was  brought  back  dead  from  the  Philippines. 
Before  he  left  Jake  gave  me  a  little  metal 
flag  which  he  pinned  upon  my  blouse.  I  stuck 
it  into  the  wall  under  the  framed  mourning 
tablet  hung  up  in  memory  of  grandmother. 
One  day  I  found  the  flag  gone,  nor  could 
it  be  discovered.  I  looked  for  it  under  every 
piece  of  furniture  in  the  room.  Finally 
mother  asked,  u  But  why  do  you  want  it  so?  " 
And,  my  eyes  swollen  with  crying,  I  sobbed, 
"  It's  so  pretty,  mammele."  [Thereupon, 
drawing  me  to  her  knee,  mother  gave  me  a 
huge,  uneven  slice  of  black  bread  spread  gen 
erously  with  home-made  grape  jelly  and 
talked  to  me  upon  the  vanity  of  loving  things 
simply  because  they  were  pretty.  Neverthe 
less  I  was  not  comforted.  Then  I  found  it, 
bent  and  broken  and  ruined  in  our  baby 
brother's  cradle.  Tears  falling  silently  I  sat 
sewing  all  afternoon  at  mother's  side  while 
she  ran  the  new  sewing  machine  she  had 
bought.  I  helped  her  to  fold  the  aprons  in 
the  customary  neat  pile  packed  into  Mrs. 
Stone's  pedlar's  basket  every  morning,  but 

[53] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

I  was  too  heart-sick  to  reply  to  mother's  sen 
tences.  When,  next  day,  I  came  home  from 
school,  mother  called  me  to  her  and  whis 
pered,  "  Here !  Do  not  cry  so.  Go  up  to 
Waler  Street  and  buy  yourself  a  flag,  since 
you  wish  it  so."  In  her  hand  was  the  money 
she  had  received  as  her  share  of  Mrs.  Stone's 
sales  for  the  day.  I  sped  to  Waler  Street. 
In  the  little  store  I  held  out  my  coin  saying, 
"  A  flag,  please."  But  the  little  hunch-back 
proprietor  looked  at  me  very  sharply  over 
her  nose-glasses  and  told  me  calmly  that  it 
was  neither  July  4th,  nor  Election  Day. 
However,  upon  hearing  that  mother  had  sent 
me  she  searched  until  she  found  a  fly-blown 
box.  I  chose  a  flag.  At  the  door  was 
mother  waiting  for  me,  and  together  we  fas 
tened  my  purchase  on  the  wall  under  the 
mourning  tablet.  Mother  drew  my  face  to 
her,  smiling  down  upon  me.  You  see, 
mother  and  I  had  really  sewn  for  that  flag 
of  mine. 


[54] 


VII 


AS  I  look  back  on  the  years  of  my  child 
hood  I  can  not  remember  mother  with 
out  seeing  upon  her  lips  the  little  smile  which 
was  so  characteristic  of  her.  Often  her 
smile  came  as  sunshine  in  the  dark  hours  of 
her  life  and  ours. 

No  one  has  ever  heard  one  complaint  from 
her  lips  through  all  her  life,  not  even  when 
the  candle  of  wee  life  of  baby  after  baby  was 
blown  out  in  the  narrow  ghetto  streets.  Our 
baby  was  never  the  same  baby  two  years  in 
succession.  The  little  cradle  held  a  new 
burden  every  year,  but  the  former  occupant 
never  lived  to  see  its  successor.  Mother  be 
came  a  mother  eleven  times.  Only  the  first 
four  children  lived.  Perhaps  that  tells  her 
economic  story. 

They  were  such  frail  little  creatures,  those 
American  babies  that  mother  bore.  My 

[55] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

task  it  was  to  take  them  out  for  the  "  fresh 
air."  Nearby  was  one  street,  cleaner, 
quieter,  than  all  the  rest.  I  would  wheel  the 
particular  baby  of  that  year  up  and  down  the 
still  block  of  blank-faced  houses.  And  some 
times  one  of  the  closed  shutters  would  be 
open.  Ah,  I  used  to  think  it  was  a  very  beau 
tiful  face  which  looked  out  with  the  question: 
"  Let  me  see  your  baby,  little  girl?" 
Mother  would  be  very  angry  when  she  heard 
that  I  had  spoken  to  them,  the  painted 
women.  If  I  pleaded  that  they  "  were  so 
pretty,"  she  assured  me  that  "  good  women 
were  never  beautiful  except  in  the  eyes  of 
God  " —  and  of  their  husbands ! 

There  was  one  little  sister  with  wax-like 
cheeks  and  hands.  She  lay  so  still  that  pas 
sers-by  thought  her  a  lovely  doll.  Mother 
would  often  take  the  limp  little  form  in  her 
arms,  as  if  to  hold  it  fast.  The  wise  old 
women  in  Soho  insisted  that  if  the  child  were 
placed  on  a  bed  of  peppermint  leaves  she 
would  recover.  Great  bunches  of  pepper 
mint  leaves  would  be  brought  to  us  by  the 
Italians  who  were  just  beginning  to  come  to 

[56] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

live  in  Soho.  The  little  sister  would  lie  as 
white  as  death  in  the  midst  of  all  the  green. 
It  used  to  seem  that  it  would  not  be  so  terrible 
if  only  this  baby  would  cry.  Finally  one 
morning  mother  and  father  wrapped  her  in 
a  great  shawl,  and  father  took  mother  to  a 
car.  Mother  had  heard  that  there  was  a  big 
doctor  who  knew  all  about  little  children.  I 
cooked  the  meal  that  noon.  We  waited  for 
mother  until  late  in  the  afternoon.  When 
she  came  in  her  eyes  were  big  and  strange, 
but  the  little  sister  was  as  still  as  ever. 
Mother  let  her  slip  from  her  hands  into  the 
cradle.  The  doctor  had  been  gone  when  she 
came.  But  the  little  sister  had  died  in  her 
arms  in  the  car,  and  mother  had  not  realised 
it  until  some  one  sitting  next  to  her  cried  out. 
Mother  had  brought  the  dead  child  home 
alone  in  her  arms. 

We  could  not  live  in  our  home  after  that. 
To  this  day  the  smell  of  peppermint  plants 
makes  me  feel  faint. 

In  our  new  home  I  discovered  the  "  little 
grey  house."  So  mother  and  I  always  spoke 
of  it.  From  the  window  of  our  front  room 

[57] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

we  could  look  directly  at  it.  It  was  a  little 
house  with  doors  close  shut  to  us  all. 

Although  it  was  directly  opposite  our 
home,  we  seldom  saw  its  inhabitants.  The 
occupants  of  that  house  never  sat  crowded  on 
the  steps  as  did  the  dwellers  in  every  other 
house.  From  its  trim  walls  came  no  sound 
of  babies'  fretful  crying,  nor  children's  weep 
ing.  Even  the  laundry  hung  out  in  its  yard 
was  screened  from  the  public  by  a  sturdy 
fence  so  that  one  could  not  judge  by  that  of 
the  wearers.  The  tenants  on  the  first  floor 
of  the  little  grey  house  were  apparently  for 
ever  out,  for  the  shades  were  always  half- 
down.  Those  living  on  the  second  floor 
never  left  their  home,  it  appeared,  for  no  one 
had  ever  seen  them.  Although  it  was  known 
that  from  its  doors  came  out  an  old  woman 
and  two  old  men,  the  dwelling  was  otherwise 
a  house  of  mystery,  absolutely  cut  off  from 
the  rest  of  us  in  the  ghetto  street. 

When  we  children  saw  the  old  lady  we 
backed  up  to  the  curbstone  to  permit  her  hur 
ried  passage  into  the  house.  Of  the  two  old 
men  seen  coming  out,  one  was  tall  and  curt, 

[58] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

and  the  other  lame.  The  lame  old  man 
often  patted  a  child  on  the  head,  and  smiled 
a  very  kindly  greeting  to  the  rest  of  us. 

In  mother  I  could  excite  only  a  feigned 
interest  in  the  mystery.  Indeed  she  would 
chide  me  when  I  strained  out  of  our  window 
in  my  efforts  to  look  into  the  second  story  of 
the  little  house.  But  I  persisted,  hoping  thus 
perchance  to  catch  a  glimpse  of  its  occupants. 
How  I  did  wish  to  know  what  was  in  there ! 
And  one  day  to  my  surprise  I  found  out. 

Mother  had  decided  to  have  us  photo 
graphed,  and  as  soon  as  we  older  children 
were  dressed  we  were  sent  out-doors  to  wait. 
Perhaps  I  was  "  dared  "  by  a  playfellow,  per 
haps  it  was  my  own  childish  wish  prompting 
me :  I  ran  up  the  steps  and  rang  the  bell.  The 
door  opened  and  there  in  the  doorway  stood 
the  little  old  lady  in  her  immaculate  apron 
and  spectacles.  I  did  not  know  what  to  say 
to  her.  I  wished  that  mother  were  near  at 
hand  that  I  might  run  to  her.  In  the  midst 
of  my  confusion  a  child  sang  out:  "  She's 
going  to  have  her  picture  took !  "  The  old 
lady  looked  at  me  and  smiled.  She  called  to 

[59] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

some  one  up  the  stairs.  Down  came  the  lame 
old  man.  They  invited  me  into  the  little 
grey  house ! 

They  were  so  very  kind  to  me  that  I  was 
not  at  all  afraid  to  speak  to  them,  nor  to  come 
again.  In  the  two  or  three  visits  which  I 
paid  them  in  their  spotless  dining-room,  I 
learned  that  their  name  was  Graham,  that 
the  lame  old  man  had  been  a  soldier  who  had 
shaken  the  hand  of  Lincoln,  and  that  the  old 
lady  was  "  Miss  Graham."  Here  was  an 
old  woman  who,  though  not  even  a  school 
teacher,  seemed  actually  contented,  and  was 
nevertheless  —  unmarried.  It  was  most 
amazing  to  me.  When  in  describing  my  visit 
I  told  mother  that  the  lady  was  a  "  Miss," 
she  shook  her  head  pityingly  and  said  "  Poor, 
poor  woman!  "  repeating  it  even  when  I  de 
clared,  "  But  she  doesn't  look  unhappy, 
mother!  " 

Once  the  lame  old  soldier  told  me  that  our 
street  was  named  after  a  famous  general. 
Then  the  grey-haired  woman  turned  to  me. 
She  said  that  there  had  been  trees  all  along 
the  curb-stones.  Only  one  family  had  lived 

[60] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

in  each  house.  Every  home  had  been  bor 
dered  with  a  little  garden.  '  There  was 
nothing  but  English  spoke  in  this  street,"  she 
added.  I  did  not  realise  then  how  be 
wildered  and  how  grieved  was  she  at  the  new 
people  crowding  into  the  once  quiet  old 
street.  u  It  don't  seem  like  home  here," 
she  said  presently.  "  It's  all  so  dirty, 
so  different!  And  still  the  old  house 
stands." 

I  too  was  dazed.  I  had  thought  that  all 
people  lived  in  Sohos  spread  far  and  wide  in 
many  states.  This  very  street  upon  which 
we  lived  had  been  lovely  with  trees,  the 
Grahams  said.  I  could  not  believe  that  in 
America  there  could  be  places  green  with  trees 
and  grass  such  as  mother  had  known  "  at 
home."  Here  all  the  land  was  crossed  with 
broken  pavements,  here  everybody  lived  in 
one  or  two  rooms  to  each  family.  But  Miss 
Graham  described  in  detail  a  street  that  might 
have  been,  as  mother  said,  a  little  park  with 
little  houses  nestling  in  it.  Mother,  hearing 
the  account  from  my  lips,  was  as  incredulous 
as  I.  When  in  the  evening  she  repeated  it 
[60 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

to  father,  we  all  went  out  and  looked  upon 
our  street.  Father  sighed,  and  mother's 
smile  faded. 

Once  our  neighbours  were  astounded  to 
observe  that  Miss  Graham  had  entered  our 
home.  I  interpreted  from  her  to  mother, 
proud  to  have  them  know  one  another.  But 
mother  said  hardly  a  word,  although  she 
smiled  shyly  and  pleasantly.  She  would 
never  consent  to  go  to  the  Grahams  with  me. 
She  always  told  me  that  she  was  "  too  busy." 
And  presently  she  lost  all  opportunity  to  see 
the  American  home  which  I  had  discovered 
on  our  street. 

For  the  Grahams  moved  at  last  from  the 
house.  A  tailor  who  struggled  to  maintain 
a  family  of  eight  took  possession  of  the  first 
floor.  A  negro  family  moved  into  the  cellar. 
The  second  floor  was  taken  by  a  huckster  and 
his  wife  and  children.  The  little  grey  house 
lost  its  trimness,  its  neatness.  It  grew  grimy. 
It  became  ragged  as  if  it  were  weary.  The 
little  grey  house  was  swallowed  up  in  Soho. 
I  never  saw  Miss  Graham  come  into  our 
street  again.  But  the  old  soldier  came  one 

[62] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

day,  and  stood  looking  at  his  former  home, 
and  went  away. 

The  Grahams  left.  But  mother  and  I 
spoke  of  them  so  often  that  it  seemed  that 
they  were  always  there  or  that  they  had  never 
been  there.  They  left  with  me  two  things: 
History  had  become  real  to  me ;  every  soldier 
was  in  my  mind  a  lame  old  man  who  held 
out  a  hand  that  had  shaken  the  hand  of  Lin 
coln  for  my  small  hand  to  shake.  And 
through  knowing  them  Soho  had  been 
revealed  to  me :  these  streets  were  unclean ; 
the  houses  dirty.  And  they  had  once  been 
beautiful.  It  was  as  if  they  had  shown  me  a 
pitiful  ragged  creature,  and  had  pointed  out 
his  rags,  and  had  told  me  they  had  known 
him  young  and  gracious  and  debonair. 


[63] 


VIII 

BECAUSE  of  the  little  grey  house  there 
came  to  be  one  sentence  which  I  said 
often  to  mother:  "  Perhaps  we  also  may 
live  in  a  house  some  day."  But  mother 
always  said  reprovingly,  "  We  have  three 
rooms  now!  " 

The  three  rooms  to  which  we  had  attained 
were  a  kitchen  and  two  bedrooms.  For  the 
added  luxury  of  the  bedrooms  '  e  gladly  paid 
with  the  forfeiture  of  all  light  within  them; 
unless  the  gas  jet  in  the  middle  room  was 
lighted,  it  was  night  dark  during  the  day. 
The  additional  room  did  not  mean  more  com 
fortable  and  spacious  quarters  for  the 
pleasure  of  my  parents.  Into  our  little 
rooms  there  came  to  live  with  us,  in  succes 
sion,  each  of  father's  sisters  as  she  was 
brought  from  Europe  to  America.  They 
lived  with  us  until  they  were  married.  Just 
as  his  father  had  chosen  mother  for  my 

[64] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

father,  so  now  did  father  select  the  spouses 
for  his  pretty  young  sisters.  Neither  in  the 
choice  of  their  husbands,  nor  in  any  circum 
stance  of  their  lives,  to  this  day,  have  father's 
sisters  ventured  to  question  his  decision. 

For  the  weddings  of  our  aunts  we  had  to 
have  new  costumes,  of  course.  And  those 
dresses  which  I  wore  were  invariably  white. 
That  was  not  because  in  Soho  the  etiquette  of 
dress  demanded  that  children  be  attired  in 
that  colour  for  weddings.  My  dresses  could 
not  have  been  made  of  any  other  colour. 

Before  a  wedding  or  a  holy  day  mother 
would  go  to  th»*  drawer  in  the  huge  wardrobe. 
From  it  she  would  take  out  a  parcel  wrapped 
in  tissue  paper  that  crackled  as  she  lifted  it. 
She  would  unfold  the  heavy  layers  of  silk  in 
the  wrappings  and  would  lift  up  —  her  wed 
ding  dress.  I  cannot  remember  mother's 
dress  whole.  But  I  know  it  had  an  immense 
skirt,  of  which  the  silk  was  as  stiff  as  card 
board.  Mother  would  spread  wide  its 
voluminous  shining  gores  and  tell  our  aunt 
that  hers  had  been  the  very  first  "  crenolin  n 
to  be  seen  in  her  native  town.  Our  aunt 

[65] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

would  say,  "  I  remember  you  were  a  very 
pretty  bride,"  and  they  would  speak  of  the 
wedding  day  and  the  guests.  Presently 
mother's  voice  would  waver  a  very  little. 
She  would  shake  out  the  crackling  silk  briskly 
and  set  to  work  to  snip  out  another  width. 
She  would  combine  the  silk  with  another  mate 
rial,  and  I  would  have  a  new  dress  to  wear 
for  the  occasion. 

With  all  the  saving  and  toiling  we  were 
still  not  able  to  have  the  ordinary  pleasures, 
such  as  parks  and  music.  It  seemed  father 
could  not  earn  enough.  Nevertheless  we 
children  always  had  enough  food,  no  matter 
how  our  parents  fared.  Even  a  sweet  or  an 
orange  sometimes  appeared  upon  our  plates; 
Sabbath  brought  for  us  little  girls  delicious 
surprises  which  mother  would  take  from  the 
oven,  to  place  unexpectedly  before  us.  "  For 
what  is  life  if  not  for  one's  children?" 
mother  has  always  said. 

Still  when  chicken  and  ice  cream  were  given 
us  with  all  cheerfulness,  books,  other  than 
prayer  books,  were  considered  an  extrava 
gance. 

[66] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

And  I  wanted  books  above  all  else ! 

To  be  sure,  I  had  my  school  books. 
These,  of  course,  mother  shared  with  me  as 
she  had  hitherto  shared  my  letter-writing  or 
even  my  play.  I  would  recite  to  her  glibly 
from  the  text-books,  which  amused  her  as 
often  as  they  awed  her.  *  The  world  is 
round?"  she  repeated  incredulously.  With 
her  needle  poised  she  would  lean  over  the 
kitchen  table,  to  see  what  I  was  doing  on 
paper.  She  would  laugh  so  heartily  at  the 
funny  mathematical  questions  upon  the  solu 
tion  of  which  I  laboured  most  conscientiously. 
"  If  a  room  is  nine  feet  by  twelve,  and  ten 
feet  high,  how  much  will  it  cost  to  paper  it 
if  the  paper  costs  twelve  cents  a  roll  and  there 
are  twenty  yards  in  a  roll?  "  I  would  look 
up  to  inquire.  "  What  sort  of  room  is  it  — 
a  kitchen  or  a  dining-room?"  would  ask 
mother.  But  when  I  told  her  it  didn't  say, 
she  thought  it  very  odd.  None  of  the  school 
books,  for  that  matter,  had  in  their  covers  a 
treasure  that  mother  and  I  could  enjoy  in  our 
daily  life.  In  the  intricacies  of  fractions, 
though  she  could  not  assist  me,  mother  would 

[67] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

comfort  me  and  encourage  me.     But  when  I 

read  to  her  such  a  question  as:     What  is 

^*9/7     she  laughed  out  loud  and  thought 

30  — |—  (40  — 5—  5/ 

that  even  the  serious  business  of  school 
was  very  droll.  "  Nevertheless,"  she  would 
observe  thoughtfully,  "  there  must  be  some 
thing  in  it  that  we  cannot  understand, 
childie." 

Then,  without  introduction  or  expectation, 
I  discovered  English  literature. 

Near  our  home  a  rag  shop  was  opened,  to 
the  delight  of  all  the  children  in  the  neigh 
bourhood,  who  loved  to  watch  the  rag-men 
sort  out  the  brilliant  pieces  of  cloth  and  silk 
and  gilt  braid  gathered  from  tailor  shops 
and  dressmaking  establishments  all  over  the 
city.  I  could  not  sate  my  eyes  upon  the 
heaped  brilliance  of  the  piles  of  cuttings,  each 
heap  lying  like  a  colourful  jewel  on  the  dusty 
wooden  floor. 

[The  proprietor,  Mr.  Rosen,  would  say  to 
me,  while  he  read  with  father  at  our  table, 
"  Go  to  the  shop,  and  take  something  pretty, 
little  one."  Fortified  by  his  invitation  I 

[68] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

would  sometimes  choose  a  gay  bit  of  silk  for 
a  doll's  dress  for  our  little  Mary.  One  day 
I  climbed  into  the  loft  of  the  shop  to  seek 
a  scrap  of  pretty  silk.  There  lay  huge  sacks 
still  unopened,  and  piles  and  piles  not  sorted. 
Beside  the  "  cuttings  "  lay  a  stack  of  papers 
flung  carelessly  together,  old  newspapers, 
wrapping  paper,  twine.  With  one  shoe  I 
kicked  back  a  soft  cloud  of  material.  I  saw 
what  seemed  to  be  a  book.  I  picked  it  up. 
It  was  bound  like  an  arithmetic  book,  with 
one  cover  off.  The  book  was  "  Little 
Women." 

I  sat  in  the  dim  light  of  the  rag  shop  and 
read  the  browned  pages  of  that  ragged  copy 
of  "  Little  Women." 

Since  then  I  have  read  profound  and  beau 
tiful  books  which  have  inspired  and  stirred 
me.  But  no  book  I  have  opened  has  meant 
as  much  to  me  as  did  that  small  volume  telling 
in  simple  words  such  as  I  myself  spoke,  the 
story  of  an  American  childhood  in  New  Eng 
land. 

I  had  found  a  new  literature,  the  literature 
of  childhood. 

[69] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

I  no  longer  read  the  little  paper-bound 
Yiddish  novelettes  which  father  then  sold. 
In  the  old  rag  shop  loft  I  devoured  English 
newspapers  and  magazines.  I  spent  long 
hours  there  each  day,  stealing  time  in  which 
I  should  haye  been  at  home  helping  mother. 
When  a  book  was  torn  at  a  critical  place  I 
felt  that  a  friend  had  been  mutilated.  And 
mother,  though  she  laughed,  began  to  bring 
me  reading  matter  also :  the  wrappings  of  all 
packages  and  purchases  were  literature;  the 
dress  patterns  copied  on  old  newspapers  from 
our  neighbours  were  also  literature.  Even 
to  this  day  I  cannot  see  a  piece  of  newspaper 
lying  on  the  pavement  without  instantly  vis 
ualising  the  kitchen  table  in  Soho  where  I 
sat  translating  to  mother  English  stories 
about  strange  people  who  spoke  in  strange 
terms  and  who  seemed  as  queer  to  mother 
and  to  me  as  if  they  lived  in  another  land. 

My  teachers  told  me  that  in  our  city  was 
a  library,  a  "  house  full  of  books,"  I  ex 
claimed  to  mother.  From  the  library  they 
brought  me  books  to  read.  I  read  history, 
travel,  children's  stories,  fairy  tales.  Fairy 

[70] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

tales  were  much  like  the  charming  folk 
stories  mother  knew  so  well.  Far  more 
marvellous  than  the  fairy  stories  were  to  me 
in  the  ghetto  street  the  stories  of  American 
child  life,  all  the  Alcott  and  the  Pepper 
books.  The  pretty  mothers,  the  childish 
ideals,  the  open  gardens,  the  homes  of  many 
rooms  were  as  unreal  to  me  as  the  fairy 
stories.  But  reading  of  them  made  my  as 
pirations  beautiful. 

My  books  were  doors  that  gave  me  en 
trance  into  another  world.  Often  I  think 
that  I  did  not  grow  up  in  the  ghetto  but  in 
the  books  I  read  as  a  child  in  the  ghetto. 
The  life  in  Soho  passed  me  by  and  did  not 
touch  me,  once  I  began  to  read.  My  inter 
ests,  most  of  my  memories  and  associations, 
were  bound  in  the  covers  of  books.  No 
longer  did  our  neighbours  find  occasion  to 
censure  me  for  playing;  I  read  incessantly. 

Books  built  a  world,  fanciful  and  strange, 
for  mother  and  me,  when  I  sat,  translating 
to  her  word  for  word  from  the  story  before 
me.  Mother  would  tell  me  that  such  people 
did  indeed  exist,  for  the  Pan,  the  small  noble 

[71] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

in  her  native  village  in  Poland,  possessed  a 
house  enclosed  by  a  garden  and  his  children 
were  gay  and  happy  and  free.  However,  she 
told  me  that  little  girls  such  as  I  must  not  de 
sire  such  wonderful  things. 

My  little  school-girl  friends,  precocious 
thirteen-year-olds,  also  discussed  my  books. 
Some  of  them  scoffingly  averred  that  there 
were  "  no  such  peoples  like  Jo  and  Beth." 
Some  looked  stupid.  Some,  with  me,  were 
eager  for  that  unknown  beauty  which  we  knew 
only  through  the  silent  words  on  printed 
pages. 

We  little  girls  loved  to  gather  after  school 
and  to  recite  the  sicknesses  in  our  families  and 
to  boast  about  them.  Emma  Sacklowitz, 
whose  mother  "  was  swelled  with  water," 
whose  father  had  a  crooked  leg  and  a  blind 
eye,  and  who  possessed  four  sisters  and  three 
brothers  every  one  of  whom  had,  or  had  had, 
scarlet  fever  or  measles  or  sore  eyes,  was 
the  sharp-eyed  little  queen  of  these  gather 
ings.  In  my  own  family  we  were  disgust 
ingly  clean  and  well  and  our  babies  died  be 
fore  I  could  in  honour  call  them  sick  "  rela- 

[72] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

tives."  Perhaps  our  delinquency  in  the  mat 
ter  of  sickness  was  due  to  the  fact  that  mother 
was  what  our  neighbours  called  so  "  terrubly 
pertikler." 

No  Friday  or  holy  day  arrived  without 
finding  mother  ready  to  meet  it  with  a  big 
wash-tub  of  water,  a  heavy  crash  towel,  and 
four  cowering  little  bodies  waiting  in  the  lit 
tle  kitchen  to  be  rubbed  dry.  The  tiny  fat 
old  woman  who  now  taught  us  Yiddish  com 
position  was  horrified  each  Friday  afternoon 
to  see  us  emerge  into  the  middle  bedroom, 
our  bodies  all  warm  and  pink  and  perspiring 
from  our  bath.  She  was  sure  that  some  day 
we  would  catch  a  fearful  chill,  and  she  dared 
not  think  of  the  consequences.  "  But  think 
of  the  consequences!"  she  would  admonish 
mother.  She  would  stay  to  watch  with  the 
greatest  disapproval,  while  mother  briskly 
dried  each  one  of  our  small  faces,  pressed  it 
against  her  bosom,  and  said,  "  Open  your 
mouth,  childie  !  "  Into  the  open  mouth  went 
a  huge  wad  of  cloth  heavily  coated  with 
coarse  salt  which  mother  rubbed  vigorously 
and  conscientiously  over  our  gums  and  teeth 

[73] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

and  tongue  without  partiality.  How  we  did 
hate  to  have  our  teeth  cleaned!  But  mother 
would  tell  us,  as  usual  employing  a  quaint 
quotation,  "  Sweet  words  taste  better  from 
sweet  mouths." 

What  I  liked  was  to  have  mother  entrust 
to  me  the  important  task  of  the  Sabbath 
cleaning.  Once  every  week  all  the  furniture 
was  moved,  each  corner  meticulously  cleaned 
and  scrubbed,  every  window-pane  polished. 
The  stove  was  blacked  until  it  gleamed,  the 
copper  pots  and  the  brass  candle-sticks  were 
polished  until  they  glowed  golden  red. 
Mother  would  come  to  look.  "  It  is  very 
well,"  she  would  say,  and  I  was  too  proud  to 
reply.  At  night  we  all  sat  tired  and  happy 
about  the  Sabbath  table.  The  candle-sticks 
held  tall  white  candles.  Mother  brought 
the  loaves  she  had  baked  that  day.  Then  she 
sat  down  beside  father  at  the  head  of  the 
table.  Her  eyes  would  beam  upon  us,  her 
voice  rose  with  ours  to  join  father's  baritone 
in  singing  the  Sabbath  songs,  and  there  would 
be  such  a  deep  peace  in  our  kitchen.  The 
Sabbath  evenings  were  evenings  to  which  one 

[74] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

looked  forward  all  the  week  long.  Then 
mother  and  father  were  happy;  and  no  plans 
were  discussed. 

One  day  mother  said  to  me,  "  Childie,  you 
are  now  thirteen  years  old.  I  do  not  know 
what  your  life  will  be.  I  hope  it  will  be 
easier  than  mine.  In  America,  to  be  a  gentle 
woman  I  hear,  you  must  know  how  to  play  the 
piano.  So  you  go  take  lessons.  Goldie 
Sloan  says  she  will  give  you  lessons  for  a 
quarter,  and  you  may  practice  on  her  piano. 
Not  to  make  talk,  better  go  in  to  Goldie  by 
the  back  way."  .  .  . 

That  was  how  I  began  to  learn  how  to  play 
the  piano.  Mother  thus  began  to  prepare 
me  —  consciously  —  for  the  life  of  an  Ameri 
can  lady.  I  wonder  how  she  managed  to 
spare  the  quarters  for  those  lessons. 


[75] 


CHAPJER  IX 

WITH  my  adolescent  life  began  a  new 
task  for  mother.  She  became  the 
buffer  in  our  family  life.  I  cannot  think  of 
mother  except  as  of  one  who  always  stood 
between  us  and  some  unhappiness,  or  father. 
It  was  she  who  made  it  her  task  to  explain 
us  to  father,  to  soften  him  to  our  desires. 
As  I  grew  older  I  refused  to  speak  anything 
but  English.  In  the  street  I  would  whisper 
constantly  to  mother  to  speak  English. 
Mother  would  try,  but  all  she  could  manage 
was  an  occasional  "  You  know  "  or  a  "  plees- 
ameecha  "  to  introductions.  Of  course  I  did 
not  realise  that  unconsciously  I  was  striving 
to  break  down  all  barriers  between  America, 
and  me,  and  my  mother.  I  felt  myself  in 
tensely  a  part  of  America.  I  read  "  The 
Man  Without  a  Country,'*  and  it  filled  me 
with  terror  and  with  grief.  When  father 
took  out  his  naturalisation  papers  —  his 

[76] 


MY     MOTHER      AND     I 

11  Americanisation  papers,"  as  I  called  them 
—  I  felt  a  personal  thrill,  a  personal  joy.  I 
could  not  understand  how  mother  could  be 
so  placid  about  it.  "  Now  you  are  an  Amer 
ican,  father,"  I  cried.  But  he  said  heavily, 
"  No,  I  am  not  for  America,  and  America  is 
not  for  me." 

He  was  finding  it  hard  to  meet  the  eco 
nomic  struggle  in  America.  He  was  then 
buying  a  house,  painfully,  on  small  instal 
ments,  as  many  people  who  have  small  in 
comes  do,  with  a  mortgage  towering  above 
the  small  equity.  We  now  occupied  a 
kitchen,  a  dining-room,  and  a  bedroom,  and 
we  had  a  bath  room,  of  which  I  must  speak 
more.  The  kitchen  was  cheerful.  Into  it 
opened  a  dark  little  dining-room.  Like  all 
the  bedrooms  which  we  knew  in  Soho,  ours 
had  almost  no  light.  But  there  was  an 
arid  bricked  little  yard  of  our  very  own. 
Mother  removed  some  of  the  bricks,  and 
planted  a  bean  stalk  for  us  children.  Father 
felt  that  we  were  progressing,  within  reason 
and  decorum. 

In  her  own  group   mother  was  a  social 

[77] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     1 

authority  who  was  invited  to  all  weddings, 
confirmations,  and  child  arrival  celebrations. 
And  as  a  social  authority  she  had  social  ob 
ligations.  It  may  seem  strange,  but  one  of 
these  was  the  lending  of  the  use  of  our  bath 
tub.  Ours  was  the  only  one  on  the  street. 
Mother  was  full  of  an  innocent  pride  in  her 
bath-tub,  and  characteristically,  she  would  say 
to  her  neighbours,  "  You  know  God  made 
water,  and  I  have  the  tub.  Why,  use  it!  " 
They  accepted  her  at  her  word.  On  Fridays 
crowds  of  them,  each  person  coming  with  his 
bundle  containing  soap,  towel,  and  clothes, 
impatiently  wait  their  turn  in  the  bath-tub. 
All  would  come  into  the  kitchen.  And  no 
one  permitted  the  window  to  be  opened  lest 
some  one  catch  cold  before  taking  a  bath! 
Mother  would  be  in  her  glory.  She  would 
hold  a  public  reception,  as  it  were.  All  who 
came  to  bathe  first  told  her  their  joys,  the 
gossip  of  the  moment,  their  woes.  By  the 
time  the  bathers  had  all  been  washed  half  of 
our  chicken  and  stuffed  fish  for  the  Sabbath, 
and  most  of  our  home-made  bread  had  been 
given  away  by  mother  to  needy  bathers. 

[78] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

Full  of  the  lore  of  my  physiology  book, 
deeply  impressed  by  its  strange  new  warn 
ings,  I  tried  to  persuade  my  father  and 
mother  that  it  was  unsanitary  —  a  novel 
word  that  amused  my  elders  —  to  have  our 
neighbours  all  bathe  in  our  tub.  I  assured 
mother  that  it  would  be  safer  for  her  and 
much  healthier  for  us  (the  latter  guilefully, 
for  I  knew  well  that  our  welfare  would  carry 
weight  with  her)  if  we  ate  only  thrice  a  day, 
and  at  regular  intervals.  How  my  parents 
laughed !  "  As  if  it  matters  when  food  goes 
in,  childie,  just  so  we  have,  God  praise, 
enough  to  eat!  And  if  your  stomach  asks 
for  bread  —  will  you  read  in  a  book,  and 
tell  it  that  it  must  wait?"  they  would  ask, 
while  mother  smiled  her  indulgent  smile. 

However,  I  quoted  my  books  industriously. 
I  was  beginning  to  desire  many  strange 
things,  things  I  had  not  heard  of  until  these 
last  years  of  grammar  school.  But  father 
was  not  always  amused  when  I  continued  to 
be  insistent  about  open  windows  and  the 
abolition  of  fried  food. 

I  intimated  to  mother  that  feeding  very 

[79] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

little  children  more  than  a  required  quantity 
made  them  ill.  Though  she  listened  inter 
estedly,  she  would  not  advise  her  friends  to 
do  as  I  quoted  from  my  books.  With  all  the 
wisdom  of  my  fourteen  years  I  preached  to 
her  friends,  placid-eyed  wives  of  wise  men 
learned  in  Holy  Law,  who  each  sanctioned 
his  spouse's  training  of  his  children.  [The 
mothers  of  many  children  would  look  at  my 
mother's  child, —  and  would  continue  their 
placid  smiling. 

At  school  we  were  learning  how  to  cook. 
Very  carefully  I  suggested  to  mother  that  per 
haps  she  would  like  to  have  me  translate  some 
of  the  recipes  for  her?  Mother,  to  whom 
the  women  in  all  the  houses  came  for  delicious 
recipes,  teased  me  with  the  gentle  raillery 
with  which  she  met  all  my  new  desires.  But 
observing  how  deeply  I  desired  it  she  asked 
if  I  really  wished  to  have  boiled  vegetables. 
Staunchly  I  affirmed  that  I  did.  However, 
at  sight  of  the  watery  food  upon  my  plate  I 
was  obliged  to  admit  myself  defeated.  I 
could  not  eat  the  dish  mother  had  prepared. 
I  saw  sorrowfully  that  it  did  not  seem  well  to 
[80] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

work  out  all  the  theories  I  was  learning. 
However,  I  could  always  persuade  mother  to 
try  out  any  idea  I  brought  home,  provided 
that  it  did  not  "  irritate  father." 


[81] 


CHAPTER  X 

THE  first  quarrel  between  my  parents 
was  caused  by  my  schooling,  although 
they  had  not  quarrelled  during  all  the  bitter 
days  of  direst  poverty  and  adjustment  to  the 
world  of  an  American  ghetto.  For  I  heard 
of  High  School.  A  representative  sent  by 
the  board  of  education  came  to  tell  the  gradu 
ating  class  of  our  grammar  school  about  high 
school.  He  told  us  that  education  was  the 
means  of  best  preparing  ourselves  for  that 
finest  of  all  things,  "  effective  Americanism." 
Even  the  most  poverty-stricken  home  in  the 
ghetto  aspired  to  send  forth  one  son  as  lawyer 
or  doctor  into  the  world.  But  it  was  unheard 
of  for  a  girl,  a  poor  girl,  to  wish  to  go  to  high 
school.  And  I  wanted  to  go.  I  had  no  con 
vincing  reason  to  give  for  my  going.  I  could 
not  even  say  that  I  wished  to  prepare  myself 
for  a  profession,  for  I  did  not.  There  was 

[82] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

only  that  desire  in  me  leaping  up  to  plead  that 
I  be  permitted  to  go  to  school,  that  I  too 
might  become  part  of  that  life  which  leads 
to  a  new  ideal :  effective  Americanism. 

I  was  afraid  to  speak  of  my  wish  openly, 
and  when  I  merely  intimated  it  all  my  uncles 
and  my  aunts  silenced  me  by  replies  spoken 
lightly,  and  dismissing  my  hopes  as  not 
worthy  of  serious  thought.  To  father  I 
never  mentioned  it,  of  course. 

Father  had  come  to  look  with  growing  dis 
trust  on  my  longing  to  know  things,  upon  my 
books  especially.  It  was  without  his  knowl 
edge  therefore  that  I  took  a  reader's  card  at 
the  public  library.  When  he  came  in  I  would 
hide  my  books  in  the  cradle  or  under  the  door 
step.  Mother  would  pretend  not  to  see  me. 
But  one  day  father  arrived  home  unexpect 
edly  early.  I  tried  to  conceal  the  book  I  was 
reading,  and  he  discovered  me  with  Oliver 
Twist  bulging  from  the  covers  of  my  prayer 
book  where,  with  trembling  hands,  I  was  try 
ing  to  hide  it.  He  flung  the  novel  on  top 
of  the  tall  book  case.  He  told  me  in  his  in 
tense  restrained  angry  voice  that  my  English 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

books,  my  desire  for  higher  education,  were 
making  me  an  alien  to  my  family,  and  that  I 
must  give  up  all  dreams  of  continuing  beyond 
the  grammar  school. 

There  was  a  stillness  in  our  kitchen. 

Then  in  a  voice  of  rare  tenderness  father 
told  me  that  he  wished  me  to  grow  up  a  pride 
to  our  people,  quiet,  modest,  a  good  home 
maker.  I  was  to  marry;  I  too  could  be  an 
other  Rachel,  another  Rebecca.  All  I  could 
think  of  while  he  was  speaking  was  that  in 
two  months  my  school  days  would  be  gone 
forever.  I  could  not  answer.  I  could  only 
look  dumbly  at  mother  who  was  nervously 
clasping  and  unclasping  her  hands.  When 
father  had  gone  she  climbed  on  a  chair,  for 
mother  is  a  very  little  woman,  and  gave  me 
my  book.  We  said  nothing  to  father's 
words;  my  parents  have  been  lovers  always 
and  mother  closed  any  protests  made  to  her 
by  saying,  "  He  is  the  father." 

Father  always  walks  with  his  lips  close 
shut,  his  hands  tense,  and  his  large  hazel  eyes 
raised,  as  if  looking  into  distant  skies.  His 
attitude  and  his  gait  are  deeply  expressive  of 

[84] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

his  mental  attitude.  For  the  glory  of  those 
ideals  in  which  he  believes  he  willingly  sacri 
ficed  himself  that  he  might  shape  the  destiny 
of  his  sisters.  He  would  joyfully  sacrifice 
himself  for  any  of  his  children,  that  they 
might  follow  the  path  he  believes  the  ideal 
one.  He  could  not  see  that  I  might  have 
ideals  different  from  those  held  by  him,  my 
father.  For  to  him  his  own  father  is  still  to 
this  day  a  beloved  teacher,  and  the  letters 
which  grandfather  sent  to  him  in  America  are 
worn  thin  with  constant  reverent  re-reading. 
It  is  as  if  father  turns  still  to  the  written 
words  of  his  father  to  guide  him,  as  he  once 
was  guided  by  the  words  spoken  by  the  lips 
now  long  silenced  in  death.  Father  expected 
me  to  obey  him  also  without  question,  of 
course. 

I  could  think  of  no  words  which  I  could 
say  to  him.  And  besides,  through  all  the 
pain  of  my  disappointment  I  dimly  saw  that 
when  classmates  of  mine  were  finding  it  dif 
ficult  to  persuade  their  parents  to  permit  them 
to  graduate  from  public  school,  it  was  pre 
posterous  of  me  to  dream  of  high  school.  It 

[85] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

was  mother  who,  due  to  her  natural  quickness 
and  her  deep  sympathy  with  all  her  children, 
understood.  She  did  not  question  whither 
my  desires  would  lead  me,  nor  what  part  she 
would  have  in  their  consummation. 

Mother  and  I  were  always  chums. 
Though  she  could  not  read  one  word  of  Eng 
lish  there  was  not  one  book  I  read  of  which 
she  did  not  know  the  narrative.  She  knew 
my  "  marks "  at  school.  She  knew  my 
friends.  She  hated  and  loved  my  teachers 
as  I  did.  It  was  as  if  she  lived  my  life  with 
me.  But  during  all  the  hot  summer  months 
after  my  graduation  from  grammar  school, 
months  wherein  she  and  I  sewed  side  by  side, 
we  let  fall  not  one  word  concerning  my  wish 
to  go  to  high  school.  Some  of  the  lads  who 
had  been  in  my  class  at  school  came  in  with 
shining  eyes  to  impart  to  us  the  tidings  that 
they  had  "  jobs "  to  u  sell  papers  after 
school,"  or  u  work  in  tobies  at  night."  That 
meant  that  they  could  go  to  high  school. 
While  they  spoke  I  would  drop  my  eyes, 
heavy  with  tears.  Every  one  seemed  to  take 
it  for  granted  that  I  would  continue,  in  the 
[86] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

years  to  come  —  just  in  the  little  room  in 
Sohq, 

If  father  came  in,  I  would  rise  instantly, 
afraid  of  what  might  be  said.  But  father 
said  nothing.  I  feared  then  that  to  him  it 
was  as  if  all  had  been  said.  His  eyes  would 
turn  toward  us  two,  as  we  sat  with  him  in  the 
evenings  in  the  kitchen,  he  studying,  and 
mother  and  I  sewing.  Somehow  I  under 
stood  that  mother,  though  she  did  not  tell  me 
so,  felt  with  me  that  with  the  approach  of  the 
first  Tuesday  in  September,  the  day  when  high 
school  opened,  a  great  storm  would  break. 

It  was  a  stormy  scene. 

Mother  tried  in  vain  to  calm  us.  I  was 
frightened,  stammering,  but  pleading  through 
my  tears  to  go  to  high  school.  Father  con 
tinued  to  repeat:  "  Impossible."  I  felt  my 
throat  go  dry.  And  then  mother  put  down 
her  sewing,  interposing  her  first  suggestion : 
"  Let  her  go  for  a  year,"  she  said.  "  We 
don't  want  her  to  grow  up  and  to  remember 
that  we  denied  her  life's  happiness." 

Oh,  I  had  known  in  my  heart  that  mother 
would  help  me ! 


XI 


THE  night  before  school  opened  mother 
and  I  sat  up  all  night  sewing  my  sailor 
suit  for  the  next  day,  for  mother  could  not 
spare  a  day's  work  on  one  of  us  children. 
On  Tuesday  morning  I  trudged  off,  tremu 
lous,  expectant,  with  her  eyes  following  me, 
to  high  school.  The  grammar  school  had 
been  on  our  street,  in  my  old  neighbourhood. 
But  I  was  the  only  girl  of  my  class  to  go  to 
the  Central  High  School.  The  school  itself 
was  outside  of  the  ghetto.  My  classmates 
were  to  be  strangers  to  me. 

They  were  indeed  strange  to  me.  Coming 
from  the  ghetto  into  the  high  school  was  like 
coming  from  a  foreign  country  into  America. 
I  know  now  that,  in  truth,  the  stories  I  had 
read  in  books  had  been  to  me  just  beautiful 
fantastic  words  until  I  came  to  this  new 
school.  Here  were  children  who  were  not 
[88] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

nobles,  as  were  the  happy  ones  in  Polish 
towns,  but  boys  and  girls  like  myself;  and 
they  were  yet  as  fortunate  as  the  sons  and 
daughters  of  the  Pan  of  whom  mother  told. 
I  could  not  understand  their  references  to 
their  home,  their  play.  Some  of  the  words 
they  used  seemed  words  from  another  lan 
guage.  I  did  not  know  what  "  dessert  "  was. 
"  Tennis  "  was  a  curious  word  to  me.  And 
when  they  spoke  of  their  fathers  "  playing  " 
golf!  I  did  not  know  their  simplest  stand 
ards,  the  simplest  forms  of  their  daily  life. 
I  felt  embarrassed  and  humiliated  and 
strange  with  them. 

What  an  embarrassing  moment  was  that 
one  when  I  opened  my  first  lunch-parcel !  I 
noticed  with  misgiving  that  the  others  had 
brought  boxes.  I  brought  a  newspaper  pack 
age  which  mother  had  prepared  for  me  while 
I  hastily  brushed  Fanny's  hair  and  rocked  the 
baby  for  her.  I  saw  that  the  boxes  of  the 
other  girls  held  dainty  squares  of  paper, 
white  cloths;  I  could  not  understand.  I 
opened  my  newspaper.  In  it  there  lay  a 
mass  of  fried  potatoes,  crushed  tomato, 

[89] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

huge,  irregular  slices  of  bread,  and  a  chunk 
of  filled  fish.  Mother  had  risen  at  daybreak 
to  cook  some  fish  for  my  first  meal  at  school. 
There  was  a  gasp  of  sympathy  from  the  girls. 
I  must  confess  that  I  myself  would  not  at  that 
time  have  been  greatly  shocked  —  had  it  not 
been  for  the  other  girls. 

"  Oh,  it  got  crushed.  What  is  it?  "  asked 
one. 

"  Of  course  you  must  throw  it  away,"  com 
miserated  another. 

I  threw  it  away. 

There  were  offers  of  sandwiches,  fruits, 
pie.  I  had  never  eaten  a  sandwich  before. 
They  seemed  very  meagre  fare  to  me.  I  was 
hungry  for  my  mother's  bread  and  fish. 
Thereafter,  though,  I  threw  all  the  lunches 
which  mother  gave  me  into  the  trash  can  out 
side  the  school  building. 

The  lunch  hours  and  the  walks  in  the  com 
panionship  of  my  new  classmates  were  per 
haps  even  more  illuminating  than  were  the 
sessions  with  our  teachers.  At  first  I  was 
too  bewildered  to  make  friends,  too  busy  in 
looking  on  the  life  to  touch  it.  One  day  the 

[90] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

white-haired  principal  of  the  high  school  said 
to  me  in  a  deep  voice  that  made  me  jump, 
though  his  blue  eyes  twinkled:  u  Still  sur 
prised?  "  Indeed,  as  he  had  observed,  I  was 
constantly  u  surprised,"  in  the  class  room,  in 
the  presence  of  the  strange  young  girls  and 
boys.  The  picture  of  their  girlhood  which 
was  reflected  in  their  conversation  was 
incredible  to  me.  It  appeared  that  most  of 
them  had  never  done  anything  but  play  during 
all  the  years  before  they  came  to  high  school. 
This  circumstance  they  seemed  to  find  per 
fectly  natural.  Furthermore,  the  girls  with 
whom  I  studied  and  talked  and  lunched  were 
not  in  the  least  embarrassed  to  confess  that 
they  had  played  until  they  were  as  old  as 
thirteen  even,  and  one  huge  freshman  of 
fifteen  still  rode  a  sled  and  was  not  ashamed 
to  have  us  know  that  she  loved  so  juvenile  a 
toy. 

After  one  Latin  examination  a  girl  with 
sunny  hair  came  up  to  me.  She  said,  "  Will 
you  have  lunches  with  me?  "  That  was  the 
high  school  formula  requesting  friendship. 
I  replied  joyfully  that  I  would.  I  found  my 


MY     MOTHER      AND     I 

first  American  girl  friend,  the  first  friend 
who  had  not  been  born  in  Europe  or  in  the 
ghetto  of  Soho.  I  brought  this  new  friend 
of  mine  to  my  home  to  meet  mother.  My 
school-mate  looked  about  her  with  wide  eyes; 
it  was  her  first  visit  to  Soho.  Mother  smiled 
to  her,  and  she  smiled  to  mother.  Their  con 
versation  went  no  further  than  "  How  do  you 
do?"  When  my  friend  had  gone  I  asked 
mother,  eagerly,  was  she  not  all  that  I  had 
described  her  to  be?  Mother  laughed,  "/ 
can't  judge  her  by  her  words!  "  After  this 
first  visit  when  my  friend  and  I  came  to  my 
home  after  school  hours  we. did  not  stop  to 
speak  to  mother.  I  would  throw  down  my 
books  in  the  kitchen,  and  ask  mother,  "  Do 
you  need  me,  mammele?  "  though  I  knew  she 
would  say  cheerily,  ".Of  course  not!  "  And 
off  I  would  go  to  the  freer  atmosphere  of  the 
street  where  my  friend  and  I  talked  of  all  our 
common  trials,  and  hopes,  and  affections,  in 
the  intensely  interesting  world  of  our  school. 
My  friend  had  such  odd  concepts.  After 
a  long  school  day  she  said,  "  I'm  going  home 
to  rest!  "  I  laughed  out  heartily  in  appre- 

[92] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

elation  of  her  humour.  But  —  she  meant  it ! 
School  was  to  her  not  a  delightful  pleasure 
at  which  one  felt  guilty  all  morning  and  after 
noon,  and  for  which  one  apologised  to  uncles 
and  aunts  constantly;  it  was  not  something 
vaguely  absurd  and  quixotic.  To  her  it  was 
a  duty. 

The  neat  young  report-teacher  gave  each 
of  us  a  slip  of  white  paper  one  morning,  and 
directed  us  to  write  "  for  what  we  were  pre 
paring."  The  other  girls  and  boys  scribbled 
busily;  a  line  or  two  quite  summed  up  their 
future  course  of  life.  Next  to  me  a  brown- 
eyed  girl  extended  her  slip  to  me.  On  her 
paper  she  had  written:  "  I  expect  to  go  to 
college."  I  asked  her  why  she  wished  to  be 
a  stenographer,  to  which  she  replied  indig 
nantly  that  she  didn't !  The  college  of  which 
she  spoke  was  not,  as  it  was  to  girls  in  Soho, 
a  "  business  college."  The  girl  next  to  me 
in  the  high  school  meant  that  she  was  going  to 
a  college  such  as  boys  attended.  I  had  never 
heard  of  a  girl  who  went  to  college.  But  the 
strangest  thing  repeated  by  me  in  our  kitchen 
was  the  statement  that  married  women,  the 

[93] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

mothers  of  some  of  the  girls,  had  gone  to 
college !  '*  There  are  many  strange  things 
and  people  you  are  learning,  childie,"  said 
mother,  with  interest. 

For  just  as  mother  had  shared  with  me  the 
description  of  it  in  the  books  I  read,  so  now 
did  she  share  with  me  the  wonder,  of  this  new 
world.  She  would  listen  to  every  detail  I 
repeated.  For  even  outside  of  my  friends 
there  were  many  marvellous  things  at  high 
school.  There  were  men  teachers  who  were 
as  dainty  "  as  brides,  really,"  mother  declared 
when  she  saw  them  at  a  high  school  event  to 
which  I  persuaded  her  to  come.  There  were 
people  in  our  city  who  had  never  seen  Soho, 
I  discovered  from  the  lips  of  one  pale-faced 
girl.  There  was  something  called  beauty, 
our  teachers  in  the  English  classes  and  the 
drawing  classes  said.  I  learned  for  the  first 
time  what  a  flower  was  when,  sitting  in  the 
botany  class  with  the  other  freshmen  I  too 
plucked  the  golden  petals  from  the  tender 
calyx  of  a  nasturtium.  I  found  the  slender 
stamens,  the  sepals.  I  had  never  heard  of 
a  petal  or  a  sepal,  except  in  books.  I  had 

[94] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

never  seen  the  golden  dust  from  which  bees 
made  their  honey. 

In  my  second  year  at  high  school  still  a 
deeper  pleasure  came.  With  a  chum  one  day 
I  walked  out  past  the  park,  past  the  scrubby 
out-posts  of  the  town,  into  —  a  wood,  a 
"  wald."  It  was  a  wood  such  as  mother  used 
to  describe,  a  space  pillared  with  great  trees, 
carpeted  with  purple  flowers  and  thick  grass, 
roofed  by  skies. 

We  plucked  great  arms-ful  of  golden-rod. 
Late  in  the  afternoon  we  left  for  home.  At 
last  I  turned  down  the  paper-strewn  pave 
ments  of  Soho's  main  business  street.  I 
walked  up  a  narrow  side-street.  At  once 
children  began  to  crowd  about  me,  each  ask 
ing,  "  Give  me  a  flower?  "  "  Can  I  have  a 
flower?"  As  I  walked  they  pressed  closer. 
I  drew  out  flowers  as  I  walked,  to  give  them. 
But  I  knew  that  I  would  be  obliged  to  stop. 
At  a  corner  where  stood  a  push-cart  pedlar 
crying  "  tomatoes !  "  there  was  a  push;  I  was 
dragged  back  and  forth.  Lean  little  arms 
pulled  at  my  arms.  I  felt  myself  crying.  I 
stood  near  the  scared  push-cart  pedlar  with 

[95] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

my  arms  quite  empty.  The  little  children  of 
Soho  had  taken  the  golden  arm-ful  I  was 
bringing  from  my  "  wald  "  to  mother.  De 
spite  my  sixteen  years  I  wept  like  a  little 
girl  when  I  told  her. 


[96] 


XII 

IN  my  freshman  year  at  school  I  became 
friends  with  three  girls  who  are  my 
friends  to  this  day.  We  four  lived  in  various 
parts  of  Soho.  There  was  so  great  a  dif 
ference  between  our  mothers !  One  was  the 
wife  of  a  ghetto  physician;  she  was  a  cultured 
woman  whose  nun-like  quiet  life  was  spent 
solitarily  amidst  the  busy  women  on  the 
crowded  streets.  The  other  mother  was  a 
woman  engaged  in  business ;  she  struggled  for 
success  that  she  might  help  her  daughter  into 
beautiful  surroundings.  The  third  mother, 
a  friend  of  my  own  mother's,  was  full  of  a 
surpassing  ambition  for  her  daughter;  her 
ambition  eventually  took  her  child  literally 
away  from  the  ghetto  and  placed  her  in  the 
best  musical  school  in  Europe.  [Those  three 
mothers  were  each  working  for  a  goal  which 
they  understood.  Mother  was  conscious  of 

[97] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

no  goal  to  which  she  was  striving  for  me. 
But  none  of  my  three  friends  had  a  mother 
more  loyal,  more  constant  in  her  love,  more  a 
chum  and  a  tender  friend,  than  was  my 
mother  to  me. 

Mother  and  I  grew  closer  than  ever  before. 
She  was  intensely  proud  of  me.  She  would 
stand  on  the  corner  with  her  purchases  of  fish 
and  chickens  for  the  Sabbath  and  flaunt  my 
wisdom  and  my  knowledge  before  all  her 
cronies.  Every  one  knew  when  I  won  a  prize, 
or  read  a  "  paper,"  or  passed  an  examination. 
To  mother  there  was  but  one  student  at  high 
school,  and  that  student  was  her  daughter. 

To  the  standards  of  the  people  I  was  com 
ing  to  know  she  altered  her  standards,  her 
speech,  her  dress.  She  even  altered  the 
whole  plan  of  her  home  for  me,  following  a 
truly  extraordinary  discovery  I  made  in  the 
planning  of  homes. 

On  a  visit  to  a  teacher  I  was  taken  into  a 
room  devoted  not  to  eating,  nor  sleeping,  nor 
cooking.  In  this  room  were  pictures,  bric-a- 
brac,  books.  There  was  a  piano.  It  was  a 
room,  they  said,  set  apart  simply  to  "  sitting." 

[98] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

The  room  was  a  living-room.  I  tried  to 
understand  what  it  would  mean  to  have  such 
a  room.  I  could  not  imagine  people  coming 
together  to  sit  in  a  house  without  working 
while  they  sat.  It  made  "  living  "  a  special, 
separate,  thing.  .  .  . 

In  the  evening  I  described  the  room  at 
home.  Father  lifted  his  eyes  from  the  open 
book  lying  before  him  on  the  oil-cloth  cover 
upon  the  kitchen  table.  "  Not  a  study?" 
he  asked  incredulously,  recalling  grand 
father's  study  "  at  home."  "  Not  for  cook 
ing  or  eating  or  sleeping  —  not  even  a  place 
in  which  the  men  study?  "  repeated  mother. 

"  It's  a  room  for  rest.  Just  a  place  in 
which  to  meet  friends  —  and  sit,"  I  tried  to 
explain. 

"  Oh,"  said  mother  quaintly,  "  it  must  be 
a  sort  of  Sabbath  room !  " 

I  wanted  a  Sabbath  room.  I  wanted  a 
room  in  which  one  simply  sat.  I  had  no 
clear  idea  of  just  what  I  would  do  in  it.  But 
I  had  no  room  of  my  own  yet,  and  the  upper 
story  in  our  house  was  rented  to  another 
family.  I  pleaded  and  pleaded  for  my  room. 

[99] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

Neighbours  and  relatives  laughed  in  astonish 
ment  mingled  with  amusement  at  my  wish. 
Some  one  told  me  that  I  was  selfish,  and  I  felt 
my  heart  contract  at  the  accusation.  Those 
who  had  seen  "  parlours  "  thought  me  pre 
suming.  But  for  the  first  time  I  requested 
something  which  would  occasion  my  parents  a 
sacrifice.  I  felt  that  it  was  imperative  that  I 
have  that  room.  And  mother  said,  "  She's 
a  big  girl.  Why  should  she  be  ashamed 
before  her  friends?  "  Father  looked  at  me 
then.  "  She  is  a  big  girl,"  he  said  thought 
fully.  The  following  spring  the  tenants 
moved  from  the  second  story  of  our  house. 
We  had  more  room  for  ourselves.  We  had 
a  living  room,  a  "  sitting  room." 

In  one  corner  we  put  a  folding  bed.  In 
another  was  a  table.  There  were  chairs  and 
chairs.  And  a  little  book-case  which  mother 
had  bought  somewhere  to  surprise  me. 
Here  at  last  was  a  "  Sabbath  room."  Here 
was  my  room.  My  room  came  to  be  differ 
ent  from  every  other  room  in  the  house,  I 
did  not  notice  the  change  in  it,  as  I  did  not 
perceive  that  I  was  changing.  The  pictures, 
[100] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

the  pennants,  were  each  a  token  of  what  I 
was  learning,  in  the  stages  of  freshman,  and 
sophomore,  and  junior,  in  high  school.  My 
room  became  also  (though  I  was  not  con 
scious  of  it  then)  the  symbol  of  the  difference 
between  me  and  the  others  in  the  other  rooms 
of  my  parents'  home. 

In  the  evenings  after  I  had  helped  mother 
with  the  work  of  the  home,  and  then  with  the 
sewing,  I  would  say,  "  Now  I  must  study, 
mammele."  At  first  I  used  to  study  at  the 
kitchen  table.  Amidst  the  chatter  of  our 
children,  and  the  unceasing  conversation  of 
visitors  who  dropped  in  with  their  children,  I 
sat,  attempting  the  stupendous  task  of  con 
centrating  on  "  learning  by  heart "  German 
and  Latin  conjugations,  and  geometry 
theorems.  But  it  became  my  habit  to  say, 
with  a  little  look  at  mother:  "  I  must  run 
into  my  room  a  while."  Gathering  my  books 
under  my  arm  I  ran  to  the  peace  of  the  living 
room.  Presently  it  came  to  pass  that,  when 
I  came  home  from  school,  I  would  drop  my 
books  on  the  table  of  my  room,  rather  than 
on  the  kitchen  table,  as  had  been  my  custom. 

[10!] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

I  felt  very  guilty  to  study  in  my  quiet  room. 
For  the  visitors  who  came  to  call  on  mother 
would  raise  their  eyebrows  when  I  disap 
peared.  "  You  are  getting  proud,"  they 
would  say.  However,  when  I  asked, 
'  Won't  you  come  into  my  room?"  they  in 
variably  but  politely  refused,  though  they 
were  mollified  by  the  invitation. 

Mother  would  come  often  to  look  into  my 
living  room.  She  would  buy  a  chair  or  a 
little  rug  and  even  finally  a  carpet,  for  its 
beautifying.  She  crotcheted  doilies  for  the 
table,  embroidered  covers  for  the  chair 
backs;  much  of  the  work  of  her  hands  went 
into  that  room.  But  I  cannot  remember  ever 
having  seen  mother  sitting  in  my  living  room. 

Mother,  who  never  saw  the  interior  of  a 
home  such  as  those  to  which  I  was  then 
beginning  to  go,  would  ask  me  eagerly,  "  Do 
you  like  their  house?  "  And  she  would  nod 
sagely  when  I  said  I  did,  or  shake  her  head 
when  I  said  I  did  not.  After  every  school 
pleasure  she  would  meet  me  with  the  query: 
"  Did  you  enjoy  it?  "  No  day  was  too  hot 
for  her  to  spend  at  the  ironing  board;  no 
[102] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

price  was  too  large  for  her  to  expend  upon 
any  garment  when  I  wished  to  go  to  an 
44  affair."  She  would  flutter  about  me, 
adjusting  ribbons,  critically  seeing  whether 
shoes  and  stockings  showed  any  signs  of 
mending.  And  when  finally  I  was  ready  to 
go,  she  would  come  to  the  door,  and  watch 
until  I  was  far  beyond  the  turn  of  the  corner. 
When  I  came  home  she  would  be  at  the  door 
waiting  for  me. 

It  was  as  if  she  had  a  vicarious  thrill  and 
joy  in  my  pleasures  and  achievements.  She 
did  not  in  the  least  understand  what  basket 
ball  was,  but  how  her  eyes  shone  when  I  ran 
in  to  her  with  the  unbelievable  tidings  that  I 
had  been  put  on  the  scrub  team!  As  soon 
as  I  came  home  from  a  game  she  would  ask 
me  from  her  seat  at  the  inevitable  sewing, 
44  Well,  who  won?  "  She  never  knew  how, 
or  what,  or  why,  we  44  won." 


[103] 


XIII 

THERE  were  few  of  my  old  schoolmates 
whom  I  now  saw.  Their  interests  of 
work  and  the  ghetto  pleasures  occupied  them 
as  my  lessons  and  my  new  friends  engrossed 
me.  At  sixteen  the  girls  about  my  home  were 
beginning  to  "go  out  "  with  young  men;  a 
few  were  the  objects  of  pardonable  delight 
to  parents  who  rejoiced  that  their  daughters 
were  being  sought  in  marriage  at  so  early  an 
age.  To  all  of  them  the  paths  of  life  led 
into  a  home  on  a  ghetto  street,  or  if  they  were 
fortunate,  to  a  little  store  in  a  little  town 
nearby. 

My  new  girl  friends  were  children  of 
sixteen.  Our  life  was  filled  with  laughter 
and  chatter  about  things  of  the  day;  there 
was  not  one  thought  in  their  minds  of  the 
responsibilities  of  the  future.  They  would 
catch  me  in  the  current  of  their  fun,  and 
[104] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

before  I  knew  it,  would  have  me  one  of  a 
knot  of  lassies  whose  books  and  rosy  cheeks 
were  no  more  the  sign  of  their  young  girl 
hood  than  were  their  clear  eyes  looking  out 
on  life  as  if  they  saw  a  game.  Our  ideals 
lay  between  the  covers  of  books.  David 
Copperfield  and  young  Newcome  and  Peter 
Stirling  were  the  imaginary  heroes  to  us. 
There  were  also  the  majestic  and  poetic  fig 
ures  in  Tennyson's  treasure  house  of  fine  men : 
"  The  Idylls  of  the  King."  Of  these  books 
it  was  hard  to  tell  mother  even  the  story. 
She  would  listen  uncomprehendingly  while  I 
enthusiastically  described  a  tournament  to 
her.  But  the  death  of  Little  Nell  brought  a 
moisture  to  her  eyes.  She  understood  the 
human  problems  and  sorrows. 

Sometimes  on  coming  home  mother  would 
enter  the  door  into  the  house  with  me.  I 
found  that  she  had  been  away  upon  an  im 
portant  mission;  she  had  been  "collecting'* 
for  a  motherless  bride,  a  girl  often  not  much 
older  than  were  we  at  high  school.  Mother 
would  collect  that  dowry  without  which  a 
bride  would  feel  dishonoured  in  coming  to  her 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

husband.  It  may  sound  impossible,  but  in 
one  day  (during  the  hours  when  I  attended 
classes  at  school)  mother,  together  with  a 
crony,  had  collected  a  dowry.  She  would 
come  home  with  a  large  handkerchief  quite 
heavy  with  money,  a  fitting  result  to  her  work 
of  the  day,  a  day  during  which  she  had  made 
a  house-to-house  canvass  in  the  ghetto.  That 
is  the  ghetto's  way  of  doing  charity.  No  one 
had  inquired  of  mother  for  whom  the  money 
was  being  given,  but  every  woman  had  gladly 
contributed  her  three  or  five  pennies  —  or 
even  a  magnificent  quarter.  There  was 
enough  in  the  big  handkerchief  to  pay  for 
kitchen  ware  and  bedding  for  the  bride-to-be. 
Soho  thus  contributed  to  the  making  of  a  new 
home  in  America. 

The  matchmakers  in  the  ghetto  began  to 
approach  mother  and  father  to  ask  if  they  had 
not  best  be  looking  for  some  young  doctor  or 
lawyer  for  me.  Mother  would  be  filled  with 
immeasurable  pride.  She  saw  me  the  wife  of 
the  haughtiest  doctor  in  the  ghetto.  .  .  . 

How  different  it  was  at  high  school!  I 
was  meeting  girls  whose  ancestors  had  fought 
[106] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

in  the  Revolutionary  and  Civil  wars,  girls 
whose  very  life  was  bound  into  the  life  of  our 
country.  There  was  nothing  that  seemed  to 
me  more  wonderful  than  to  have  been  born 
of  parents  that  were  Americans.  Some  of 
my  classmates  had  names  which  had  been  the 
names  of  children  when  first  Plymouth  Rock 
was  touched  by  the  first  immigrants  to 
America.  On  Decoration  Day  girls  and  boys 
who  sat  by  my  side  in  school  went  with  their 
parents  to  place  flowers  on  the  graves  of 
members  of  their  families.  The  sorrows, 
the  dead  of  their  land,  her  pride,  were  their 
sorrows  and  their  pride.  Sometimes  at 
home  it  seemed  to  me  impossible  that  I  could 
be  in  the  same  city  with  those  children  who 
were  of,  and  part  of,  America. 

Soho  was  growing  bigger.  Before 
mother's  eyes  and  mine  quiet  streets  about  us, 
streets  which  we  had  seen  orderly  and  well- 
kept,  were  becoming  filled  with  a  steadily 
growing  population  of  new  families.  Before 
my  eyes  I  saw  streets  change  just  as  Miss 
Graham,  long  ago,  had  told  me  that  she  had 
seen  her  street  change.  In  those  days  I  could 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

always  tell  mother  everything  I  felt.  And  I 
grew  to  hate  our  little  kitchen  which  try  as  we 
would,  we  could  never  long  keep  tidy.  I 
hated  the  ugly,  smelly  pavements  where  the 
frowsy  women  stood  gossiping  with  ill-kept 
children  in  their  arms.  A  great  sense  of 
oppression  came  to  grow  upon  me,  as  if  I, 
with  them,  were  imprisoned  in  the  narrow 
streets  of  Soho.  Mother  would  listen  quiet 
ly,  but  understandingly. 

Little  by  little,  though,  we  were  changing 
in  our  own  home.  We  children  now  openly 
spoke  English  to  one  another,  not  only  in  the 
street,  as  always,  but  even  in  the  house  before 
father.  Even  to  mother  we  often  expressed 
our  thoughts  in  the  strange  tongue,  giving 
quaint  jargon  turns  to  our  phrases  that  she 
might  understand  us  the  more  readily.  For 
instance  we  would  declare  to  her,  "  I  won't 
go  if  my  birthday  falls  out  on  a  Saturday," 
or  we  would  ask  her,  "  Shall  we  put  another 
potato  here  in?  "  One  Thanksgiving  father 
brought  home  a  turkey  and  for  the  first  time 
we  tasted  the  huge  national  fowl,  which 
mother  compared  to  ducks  and  chickens  and 
[108] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

geese  that  had  been  the  piece  de  resistance  at 
ceremonies  and  weddings  long  past.  From 
the  head  of  the  table  (decked  with  a  white 
cloth  as  if  it  were  a  holy  day)  father  told  us 
many  a  tale  from  the  Talmud  while  mother 
as  usual  listened  with  rapt  admiration.  Duly 
modest,  I  then  explained  the  meaning  of  the 
day;  though  mother  expressed  her  approval 
she  advised  me  seriously  that  one  must  not 
give  thanks  only  on  one  day  and  for  one 
bird! 

The  white  cloth  which  had  been  spread  on 
the  table  on  Sabbath  and  holy  days  only,  now 
displaced  the  red  cloth  even  on  week  days. 
Napkins  were  served  at  meals.  Once  after 
we  had  removed  the  dishes  from  the  table 
and  I  turned  to  leave,  mother  looked  at  me 
archly,  saying,  "  Wait,  there  is  more.  You 
forget."  With  eyes  twinkling  she  placed  on 
the  cloth  a  bowl  of  apples;  mother  had  intro 
duced  dessert  to  our  meals.  Ah,  mother 
tried  so  hard  to  do  in  her  home  as  u  they  " 
were  doing  in  those  other  homes  I  was  com 
ing  to  know ! 

It  was  my  first  school  party  which  made  me 
[109] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

realise  how  different  was  my  mother  from  the 
mothers  of  all  the  girls  who  were  now  my 
friends.  There  was  no  mother  whom  I  had 
ever  seen  in  Soho  who  could  approach  my 
mother.  I  was  very  proud  of  the  little  curls 
blowing  about  her  rosy  cheeks,  of  her  trim, 
plump,  little  figure  in  its  close  fitting  waist 
and  apron.  On  holy  days  she  dressed  in  neat 
sateen,  or  even  in  cashmere. 

All  my  standards  fell  before  the  vision  of 
the  strange  mother  I  saw  at  the  party  given 
by  my  classmate.  I  could  not  believe  that  the 
woman  who  opened  the  door  to  my  knock 
was  my  friend's  mother.  A  woman  in  white! 
Why,  mothers  dressed  in  brown  and  in  black, 
I  always  knew.  And  this  mother  sang  to  us. 
She  romped  through  the  two-steps  with  us, 
and  judged  the  forfeits.  I  had  always 
thought  mothers  never  "  enjoyed,"  just 
worked.  This  strange  mother  opened  a  new 
window  to  me  in  the  possibilities  of  women's 
lives.  pTo  my  eyes  my  mother's  life  appeared 
all  at  once  as  something  to  be  pitied  —  to  be 
questioned. 

As  mother  helped  me  off  with  my  things 
[no] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

when  I  came  home  she  asked,  as  was  custom 
ary  between  us,  "  Did  you  have  a  good  time, 
childie?"  While  I  described  all  that  hap 
pened  she  smiled  and  nodded  alternately.  I 
could  not  have  explained  why  I  hesitated  until 
the  very  end  before  I  told  her  of  my  friend's 
mother.  Somehow  I  was  afraid  that  mother 
would  be  hurt  at  the  picture  of  that  white- 
gowned,  laughing,  young  mother  of  my  class 
mate,  and  something  cut  into  my  heart  at  the 
thought  of  hurting  her.  When  finally  I  did 
describe  her,  and  her  dress,  and  her  gay  romp 
ing  with  all  the  young  girls  and  boys,  mother's 
eyes  came  to  mine.  I  dropped  my  own  until 
I  had  finished;  I  could  not  endure  to  see  that 
strange  look  which  for  the  first  time  in  my 
life,  mother  turned  to  me.  Then  mother 
said  simply,  "  It  is  very  late  and  you  must  go 
to  bed,  daughter." 


XIV 

I  TOOK  honours  at  high  school.  But  I 
did  not  know  what  to  do,  where  to 
begin.  The  man  who  had  the  deepest  in 
fluence  upon  my  life  was  the  white-haired, 
keen-tongued  old  Yankee  scholar,  Dr.  Mc- 
Farland,  the  principal  of  our  high  school.  It 
was  he  who  first  showed  me  that  I  could  make 
myself  an  American  woman,  no  matter 
whether  my  parents  or  environment  were 
American  or  not,  that  America  had  need  of 
such  as  I,  young  people  eager,  enthusiastic, 
with  ideals,  and  a  deep  and  supreme  love  for 
her,  and  an  understanding  of  that  old  life 
from  which  so  many  of  America's  new  citi 
zens  come.  "  You  must  be  the  interpreter  of 
the  old  to  the  new  world,  and  of  the  new  to 
the  old,"  was  the  large  vision  he  held  out  to 
me. 

It  was  he  who  decided  that  I  must  go  to 

[112] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

college.  He  came  to  my  parents  with  the 
news  that  I  had  won  a  scholarship,  and  with 
the  demand  that  I  be  permitted  to  use  it.  All 
the  girls  whom  I  had  known  in  my  childhood 
were  already  assuming  the  burdens  of  life; 
many  were  already  married.  And  I  wanted 
to  go  still  to  school!  There  followed  a 
strange  interview  between  the  Yankee  min 
ister  and  teacher  and  my  father,  the  Polish 
rabbi  who  spoke  in  his  halting  English  in 
reply  to  the  crisp  sentences  of  the  other. 
With  his  characteristic  forceful  voice  my 
teacher  described  to  my  father  what  college 
would  mean  to  me.  Father  listened  intently. 
Beside  him  sat  mother,  a  great  deal 
frightened  by  the  important  man  who  was  in 
her  house.  She  brought  wine  and  home 
made  cakes;  it  was  quite  a  quaint  ceremony 
at  her  hands.  Father  sat  very  still  while  the 
doctor  spoke  in  that  dark  little  dining-room 
of  ours,  for  it  was  like  mother  to  take  her 
own  guests  and  father's  into  the  dining-room 
rather  than  into  my  "  Sabbath  room."  Fi 
nally  father,  choosing  his  words  carefully, 
with  difficulty,  said,  to  Dr.  McFarland,  "  Sir, 


MY,     MOTHER     AND     1 

do  you  know  you  are  the  first  American  gen 
tleman  who  has  spoken  to  me  in  America?  " 

It  was  true. 

In  all  the  years  of  his  life  in  America, 
father  the  scholar,  the  dreamer,  had  never 
really  met  a  real  American.  He  had  met 
people  who  spoke  English,  the  language  of 
America.  They  were  the  bums  in  our  nar 
row  streets,  the  crooked  politicians  in  our 
ward.  There  was  not  one  man  whom  father 
knew  as  an  American  —  who  was  a  gentle 
man. 

Neither  father  nor  I  realised  that  it  was 
through  me,  and  the  education  which  he  had 
opposed,  that  father  met  his  first  American 
gentleman. 

During  the  course  of  the  long  interview 
father  told  the  doctor  that  he  could  not  under 
stand  what  it  was  I  wished.  "  If  we  let  her 
go  to  college,"  he  said,  "  it  will  only  draw 
her  away  from  us  forever,  and  from  her 
people  also."  Presently  he  asked  seriously, 
"  Whom  could  she  marry  if  she  became  so 
learned?  There  would  be  no  one  among  our 
own  people  to  suit  her."  And  he  added 

[114] 


'MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

gravely,  "  I  could  not  afford  a  dowry  large 
enough  to  get  her  a  lawyer  or  a  doctor."  At 
that  mother  interposed  hastily,  timidly,  but 
eagerly,  that  he  need  not  worry  about  that; 
she  was  saving  for  my  trousseau,  and  besides, 
a  girl  such  as  I  would  require  no  dowry ! 

Dr.  McF did  laugh  then ! 

Of  course  mother  saw  to  it  that  I  went  to 
college.  That  June  I  persuaded  her  to  come 
with  me  to  the  baccalaureate  sermon  at  the 
college.  As  the  girls  in  their  gowns,  with  the 
soft  whiteness  of  their  dresses  just  gleaming 
through,  filed  into  their  seats  mother's  cheeks 
were  as  flushed  as  mine.  There  were  won 
derful  things  I  saw  in  the  future,  things  worth 
suffering  for.  I  pointed  out  to  mother  the 
chancellor,  some  of  the  teachers.  The  music 
of  the  service,  the  nearness  of  my  own  desire's 
goal,  made  me  feel  solemn  and  afraid. 
Looking  at  the  others  in  whose  midst  we  sat 
I  wondered  if  I  could  be  part  of  these  women 
who  were  so  different  from  those  among 
whom  I  had  lived  during  the  past  years.  For 
a  moment  I  almost  wished  to  run  back  home, 
to  that  which  was  sure  and  familiar. 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

Mother  too  was  looking  at  the  men  and 
women  near  us,  behind  us  in  the  gallery.  She 
folded  her  hands  and  then  touched  mine. 

"  Do  you  want  me  to  be  like  them?  "  I 
whispered  to  her.  My  eyes  were  full  of 
tears. 

"  Yes,"  said  mother. 

So,  in  the  old  gallery  mother  declared  her 
intention  to  give  me  to  that  strange  new 
womanhood  of  America,  and  I  registered 
that  fall. 


[116] 


XV 


/COLLEGE!  College  means  the  culmi- 
V><  nation  of  most  girls'  young  woman 
hood,  the  gate  through  which  they  enter  into 
their  individual  life.  But  for  me  it  meant 
things  I  cannot  write  down :  new  friendships, 
new  ideals,  new  standards,  of  course.  But  it 
meant  more  than  that.  It  meant  not  only  a 
new  life;  it  meant  to  me  a  new  self.  Enter 
ing  college  was  to  me  as  if  I  had  in  truth 
been  born  anew. 

In  those  first  months  at  college,  amidst  the 
men  and  women  students  from  cities  all  over 
the  state,  I  learned  that  there  might  be  inno 
cent  fun  as  well  as  toil  —  for  me  also.  I  dis 
covered  that  men  and  women  need  not  have 
the  one  relation  of  marriage ;  that  they  might 
be  friends,  as  women  are  friends  with  women. 
I  learned  that  I  was  an  American  college 
woman. 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

On  the  very  first  day  I  entered  college,  and 
came  into  the  narrow,  long  room  which  was 
the  "  girls'  room,"  I  found  that  I  was  not 
different  from  any  young  woman  who  was  sit 
ting  in  it.  Among  all  those  girls  I,  who  had 
lived  all  my  life  in  the  foreign  atmosphere  of 
Soho  —  belonged !  There  was  one  girl  with 
Irish  eyes  and  wild-rose  skin  whose  gaze  met 
mine,  and  we  smiled  to  one  another;  I  knew 
that  we  had  found  each  other  as  friends. 
Another  girl,  a  senior,  with  grey  eyes  and 
heavy  golden  hair,  took  me  under  her  wing. 
Nor  did  the  others  find  me  curious,  or  —  in 
teresting.  They  saw  me  as  one  exactly  — 
like  themselves.  Something  sang  in  my  heart 
when  I  thought  of  it. 

I  was  no  longer  a  wistful  girl  looking  on. 
I  entered  that  little  American  university,  and 
I  was  accepted  as  part  of,  and  I  grew  into, 
American  womanhood  in  its  friendly  white 
walls. 

Ah,  I  do  not  think  one  of  the  others  could 

have  known  what  every  task  and  pleasure 

meant  to  me.     My  friends,  my  daily  work, 

my  hopes,  were  centred  in  the  college  walls, 

[118] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

as  if  they  were  a  treasure  house  from  which 
my  riches  came.  On  holidays  when  the 
lecture  rooms  were  empty  I  felt  lost;  but 
often  and  often  I  would  come  up  to  the 
grounds  just  to  walk  through  the  white  rooms, 
to  feel  the  physical  nearness  of  the  place. 

To  me  no  hour  could  be  formal  or  drab. 
Through  the  classical  club  I  came  to  know  the 
paintings  of  olden  times,  to  have  as  part  of 
my  life  the  beauty  of  nations  long  dead.  The 
Latin  classes  gave  a  new  dignity  and  mean 
ing  to  my  old  lessons  in  the  Hebrew  school, 
and  I  found  that  other  nations  had  also  lived 
and  written.  In  the  literary  club  one  could 
express  one's  self  upon  principles  and  emo 
tions  which  others  understood  and  felt  in 
common.  History  was  told  us  by  Dr.  Dyess, 
a  fine  and  rarely  upright  man  who  opened  to 
all  of  us  the  riches  of  his  scholarly  mind;  and 
to  me  he  gave  a  new  vision  of  life  and 
illumined  all  history  and  its  ideals.  In  the 
library,  where  I  spent  hours  in  turning  the 
leaves  of  beautiful  books,  Shelley  and  Brown 
ing  first  spoke  to  me. 

Toward  the  end  of  the  first  semester  a 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

great  undertaking  was  assumed  by  one  of  the 
college  clubs.  My  golden-haired  senior,  now 
my  friend,  invited  me  to  share  responsibility 
with  her.  Rather  breathlessly  I  thought  of 
it:  we  were  making  arrangements  with  the 
Ben  Greet  Players  to  give  a  performance 
under  the  club's  auspices.  She  and  I  felt  a 
thrill  each  time  we  passed  the  little  theatre 
where  the  play  was  to  be  given.  We  trudged 
through  rain  and  snow  selling  tickets,  urging 
principals  of  high  schools  to  persuade  their 
students  to  come.  Our  great  day  came. 
Despite  all  our  faithful  work,  our  glowing 
hopes,  our  venture  into  the  field  of  dramatic 
art  did  not  succeed.  On  the  day  of  the  per 
formance  the  house  we  had  so  surely  hoped  to 
find  full  was  half  empty.  After  the  play  we 
stood  watching  the  audience  straggling  out 
into  the  wet  street.  We  trotted  down  all  the 
steps  from  our  vantage  point  in  the  gallery. 
We  tried  to  look  very  dolefully  at  one 
another.  But  our  eyes  met.  And  I  could 
not  help  smiling.  The  other  girl's  clear  voice 
rang  out  with  mine.  For  had  not  she  and  I 
touched  finance,  art,  drama?  .  .  .  We  were 
[120] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

properly  abashed  at  our  lack  of  success.  But 
after  all,  we  had  caused  Macbeth  to  tread 
across  the  stage  that  day ! 

Walking  home,  half-running  with  excite 
ment,  I  felt  myself  smiling.  How  often 
there  was  occasion  for  happiness  in  the  new 
life  at  college !  I  remembered  lines  that  had 
been  said  in  the  play,  lines  familiar  through 
our  own  study  in  the  Shakespeare  classes.  I 
hardly  knew  where  I  was  walking  until  I 
bumped  squarely  into  some  one.  I  looked  up 
to  see  that  before  me  stood  a  haggard  woman 
of,  apparently,  thirty  years  of  age.  Whim 
pering  behind  her  toddled  a  wee  child.  It 
was  evident  that  the  woman  was  soon  to  be 
a  mother  again.  I  began  to  stammer  words 
of  an  apology-  The  woman  pulled  her 
blouse  shut  about  her  throat.  I  knew  her  in 
a  moment,  before  I  had  said  the  first  syllable. 
She  had  been  one  of  our  neighbours  when  our 
home  had  been  opposite  the  Grahams.  This 
woman  who  seemed  to  be  thirty  was  only  two 
years  older  than  I.  Though  we  now  lived 
within  a  few  squares  of  one  another  I  had  not 
seen  her  for  years.  I  had  not  heard  of  her 
[121] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

marriage.  '  You're  so  busy  you  might  as 
well  live  in  another  city,"  she  said  with  a 
friendly  diffident  smile. 

On  the  evening  when  she  was  bringing 
forth  to  Soho  another  child  I  was  at  a  college 
dance.  When  she  stood,  only  a  few  weeks 
later,  drearily  watching  the  earth  close  over 
the  little  life  that  she  had  borne,  I  who  had 
played  with  her  only  a  half  dozen  years 
before,  was  standing  with  parted  lips,  waiting 
to  see  how  our  beloved  Latin  teacher  would 
receive  the  silver  loving  cup  which  I  had 
helped  choose  for  him.  I  did  not  even  hear 
of  the  other  girl's  sorrow  until  months  after 
wards. 

It  was  not  only  that  I  belonged  to  a  new 
world.  My  world  grew  each  day.  In  the 
classes  were  young  women  whose  home  life 
I  learned  and  shared,  and  from  them  I  came 
to  know  the  meaning  of  our  land  in  the 
intimate  daily  experience.  One  Thanksgiv 
ing  a  number  of  us  spent  together  with  a 
classmate.  Hers  was  so  quiet  a  home  that 
I  was  not  confused  by  formality  and  servants. 
The  house,  small  and  neat,  snuggled  against 
[122] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

the  side  of  a  little  hill.  In  that  place  the 
dwellings  were  so  far  apart  that  living  in  my 
friend's  house  was  like  living  in  a  home-world 
of  one's  own.  We  ate  the  big  Thanksgiving 
dinner  in  the  midst  of  laughter  and  jest.  But 
there  was  just  a  shadow  of  sadness  through 
all  our  enjoyment  of  the  day,  because  of  those 
"  who  had  not  enough  to  be  thankful  for," 
our  host  said.  The  shadow  lay  perhaps  less 
lightly  upon  me  than  upon  the  other  girls. 
We  spoke  of  the  customs  which  had  come  to 
cling  and  to  grow  about  the  observance  of  the 
day.  The  father  accompanied  us  when  we 
took  a  long  walk  that  afternoon  through  the 
sprinkling  of  snow  that  powdered  the  streets 
and  yellow  roads.  Spontaneous,  merry 
laughter  rose  again  and  again  from  our  lips 
as  he  told  us  many  a  joke  and  tale.  And  he 
enjoyed  with  us  the  stories  of  college  fun,  and 
listened  understandingly  to  the  serious  words 
that  the  quiet  afternoon  brought  from  our 
hearts. 

In  the  evening  we  sat  in  the  soft  light,  our 
friend  at  her  father's  knee,  her  older  sister  by 
the  fire,  and  we  others  about  the  mother. 
[123] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

Presently  the  father  read  to  us,  and  we  spoke 
of  what  he  had  read.  All  my  life  that  day 
will  be  to  me  the  interpretation  of  Thanks 
giving,  its  austere  and  simple  beauty,  its 
peace.  When  late  that  night  we  girls  snug 
gled  into  the  snowy  beds  the  mother  of  the 
house  came  to  see  each  of  us,  her  gentle  face 
the  last  image  that  we  took  with  us  into  our 
dreams  that  night. 

I  became  so  much  part  of  the  life  about  me 
that  only  when  I  came  home  in  the  evenings 
could  I  think  of  myself  as  part  of  the  old 
ghetto,  of  Soho.  I  did  not  notice  how  I  was 
leaving  behind  me  not  only  the  ghetto,  but  its 
people  also. 


XVI 

AND  mother?  There  is  so  little  to  say 
of  mother  and  myself  during  these 
college  years  because  she  had  so  little  part  in 
them.  There  was  no  longer  need  for  me  to 
do  the  household  tasks  with  mother,  since  I 
was  earning  money  by  teaching  at  night 
school  (for  I  worked  my  way  through  col 
lege).  The  Sabbath  scrubbing  which  it  had 
been  my  pride  to  perform,  and  which  had 
left  me  happy,  and  wet  to  the  skin,  was  now 
done  by  a  negro  woman  to  whom  mother 
spoke  in  her  quaint  English.  Grandmother's 
copper  and  brass  were  now  polished  by  the 
hands  of  my  younger  sisters.  Sometimes 
mother  and  I  saw  each  other  only  for  a  few 
brief  moments  when  I  left  for  college  in  the 
morning,  and  for  another  few  moments  at 
night  when  I  came  home,  tired  from  teaching. 
I  taught  in  that  school  near  our  home  where 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

I  had  myself  been  a  pupil  in  my  childhood. 
Our  neighbours  and  the  people  who  lived 
about  us  came  for  instruction  to  the  immi 
grant  classes  where  I  was  a  teacher.  Some 
times  I  would  find  a  relative  of  one  of  my 
students,  or  perhaps  even  a  student  himself, 
talking  to  mother  and  father  in  the  little  din 
ing-room.  When  I  sat  down  conversation 
would  halt,  as  if  I  could  not  be  expected  to  be 
interested  in  those  affairs  of  which  they 
were  speaking  so  earnestly  to  my  parents. 
Mother,  although  she  glanced  again  and 
again  from  my  pupil  to  me  with  pride,  would 
yet  sit  strangely  timid  and  self-conscious. 

In  the  early  summer  evenings  it  was 
mother's  custom  to  sit  on  the  steps  of  our 
house,  crocheting  by  the  light  of  the  street 
lamp  opposite.  Sometimes,  after  night 
school,  when  it  was  very  warm  indoors,  I 
would  come  out  also,  to  sit  beside  her,  an 
open  book  upon  my  knees.  Children 
swarmed  on  the  pavements.  Opposite  us  a 
little  man  coughed  a  hoarse  little  cough  that 
caught  one's  heart.  Frequently  there  arose 
a  brief  sobbing  cry  from  some  child.  A 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

mother's  frightened,  scolding  voice  would 
shrill  through  a  window  as  an  automobile 
lumbered  down  amidst  a  crowd  of  boys  play 
ing  in  the  street.  Women  passing  stopped  to 
greet  mother.  Occasionally  a  grandam 
would  rest  for  a  moment  beside  us.  There 
would  be  a  brief  conversation,  and  then 
silence. 

Often  mother  would  put  down  her  work, 
rise  swiftly,  and  walk  down  the  street  with 
her  quick  little  steps.  And  presently  she 
would  re-appear,  a  girl  coming  with  her  who 
nodded  to  me  a  shy,  sweet-lipped  greeting. 
Mother  had  gone  to  invite  her  to  come  up  to 
our  house,  "  and  keep  us  company."  In  the 
years  past  it  had  not  been  necessary  for 
mother  to  seek  another  when  we  two  were 
together.  The  girl  with  her  was  a  new 
comer  to  Soho.  Mother  had  discovered  her, 
wistful  and  lonely,  with  only  her  medical  pre 
paratory  studies  to  fill  her  need  for  friends. 

After  our  greetings  had  been  exchanged  we 

would  stand,  the  girl  and  mother  and  I,  as 

if  waiting.     Hardly  a  word  would  be  spoken 

until  mother  said,  without  raising  her  eyes, 

[127] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     1 

"  Had  you  two  not  better  —  take  a  little 
walk?"  A  few  sentences  followed.  My 
friend  and  I  would  go  off,  leaving  mother  to 
crochet  in  the  light  of  the  street  lamp. 

I  knew  that  mother's  eyes  followed  us  until 
we  disappeared  around  the  corner. 

We,  my  companion  and  I,  spoke  only  a 
phrase  now  and  then  as  we  trudged  up  the 
streets  of  Soho.  We  needed  no  words.  We 
both  understood  and  we  both  desired  the 
same  thing. 

Once  we  walked  and  walked  until  finally  we 
came  to  a  street  in  which  the  houses  were  each 
lawn-bordered.  Great  heaps  of  living  snow 
balls  lay  white  upon  the  green  of  the  grass. 
We  stood  sniffing  in  the  odours  coming  from 
unseen  gardens  which  were  hidden  in  the 
darkness  of  the  night.  We  climbed  to  the 
terrace  and  looked  into  a  lighted  living-room. 
We  seemed  enveloped  in  something  beautiful, 
exquisite,  unseen.  Catching  each  other's 
hands,  we  leaped  down. 

In  the  summer  warmth  fell  the  first  drops 
of  a  light  rain.  We  began  to  run.  Of  one 
accord  we  put  out  our  arms  and  "  flew  " 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

through  that  beautiful  dusky  green  street. 
And  it  seemed  to  us  that  we  were  truly  flying 
away  —  from  Soho.  The  soft  wind  beat 
against  our  faces,  flowers  and  trees  sent  per 
fume  to  us  in  our  flight. 

And  then  a  cluster  of  lights  showed  in  the 
dark  distance. 

"  That  is  Soho  we  see  again,"  said  my 
companion. 

We  dropped  our  outstretched  arms. 

Somehow  I  felt  that  all  my  life  would  be 
a  flying  away  from  Soho,  a  struggle  to  leave 
it,  a  brief  space  in  beauty,  and  then  suddenly 
I  would  turn  to  find  that  I  had  returned  to  it. 

I  had  a  brief  momentary  picture  of  mother 
sitting  alone  there  on  the  steps.  When  we 
came  home,  she  was  still  crocheting.  Her 
glance  met  mine.  But  I  said  nothing.  I  sat 
down  beside  her.  And  presently  we  spoke, 
of  things  outside  our  lives,  of  the  dresses 
which  the  passers-by  were  sporting,  of  the 
weather,  and  even  of  an  item  in  the  news 
paper,  which  my  sister  had  read  to  mother  in 
English. 

Mother  was  doing  her  utmost  to  "  move 
[129] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

on "  with  my  sisters  and  me.  She  tried 
breathlessly,  as  it  were,  to  catch  up  with  us, 
with  the  new,  and  yet  not  to  lose  the  old,  to 
be  American  for  us,  and  still  not  to  leave  her 
husband  behind.  She  tried  to  speak  English, 
broken  sentences  that  ended  in  her  cheerful 
little  laugh,  as  she  would  admit  defeat  and 
relapse  into  comfortable  jargon.  She  even 
struggled  with  the  English  alphabet,  but  she 
could  not  master  the  mere  ABC's.  "  I  am 
one  of  those  who  work  with  the  hands,  and 
not  the  head,"  she  would  say  deprecatingly. 
And  her  hands  were  making  exquisite  laces 
and  daintiest  embroidery  for  me  to  wear. 
Her  hands  were  also  busy  at  that  time  with  a 
secret  task  which  I  did  not  hear  of  until  years 
later. 

For  at  that  time  mother  and  I  did  not 
speak  so  freely  as  we  used  to  speak.  And 
she  began  to  look  at  me  often  in  a  manner 
that  brought  a  tightening  to  my  throat. 
Heretofore  I  would  have  gone  to  her  and 
asked  her  what  was  troubling  her,  what  I 
could  do  to  help  her  bear  her  burden.  But 
now  I  was  afraid  to  speak,  afraid  to  ask  her. 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

For  I  half  knew  the  reply  to  my  question,  and 
I  knew  that  mother  would  never  answer  my 
question,  lest  she  might  hurt  me  by  what  her 
answer  would  imply. 

Ah,  at  that  time  I  did  not  even  stop  to  see 
how  her  eyes  were  looking  upon  the  path  I 
was  choosing,  the  path  that  turned  abruptly 
from  hers.  There  was  so  much  to  occupy  me 
in  my  life  of  the  moment,  in  my  hopes  of  the 
future.  Even  my  unhappiness  was  some 
thing  apart  from  her.  I  know  now  that 
mother  felt  afraid  of  me,  of  the  girls  I  knew, 
of  the  tall  young  men  who  came  to  see  me  and 
who  spoke  only  English  words  in  a  manner 
that  made  them  seem  infinitely  remote  to  my 
eager  little  mother. 

I  thought  it  was  Soho  I  was  leaving  behind 
me.  But  mother  —  not  mother. 

I  did  not  even  know  that  mother  and  I  were 
drifting  apart  until  there  came  a  certain  even 
ing  in  early  winter  in  my  last  year  of  college. 
I  had  planned  to  spend  that  evening  with  a 
friend  from  whose  house  we  were  to  go  to 
some  pleasure  together.  *  You  will  go  to 
college  right  from  her  home  to-morrow,  of 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

course/'  said  mother.  I  nodded.  And  we 
spoke  no  further.  My  head  ached  with 
many  unanswered  questions,  and  my  heart 
ached  also,  with  fears  for  the  future,  fears 
that  rose  again  and  again  that  day  to  con 
front  me.  It  was  my  twenty-first  birthday. 
I  entered  the  quiet  parlour  of  my  friend  and 
greeted  her.  She  flooded  the  room  with 
light.  Laughing,  excited,  stood  a  crowd  of 
college  men  and  women  gathered  to  "  sur 
prise  "  me  with  their  good  wishes.  I  could 
not  have  told  them  how  deeply  moved  I  was. 
The  laughter  and  the  joyousness  lifted  me  up, 
tearing  me  away  from  the  thoughts  that  had 
been  with  me  all  that  day.  How  gay  and 
happy  and  friendly  were  we  all!  Just  by 
being  together  in  the  same  room  we  created  a 
world  that  was  ours.  My  friend  and  I 
remained  awake  talking  into  the  early  morn 
ing.  It  was  not  until  after  lecture  and  then 
night  school  next  day  that  I  came  home.  At 
the  door  was  mother,  waiting,  shivering 
despite  her  shawl,  in  the  winter  night. 
u  You  are  late,"  said  mother  anxiously.  In 
a  rush  of  happiness  I  told  her  of  the  unex- 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

pected  party,  of  the  friendliness  and  the  joy. 
"  Just  think,  mother,  my  twenty-first  birth 
day  when  I  became  a  woman !  "  I  cried. 
There  was  a  little  pause.  "  When  you 
became  a  woman  —  strangers  rejoiced  with 
you,"  said  mother. 

As  if  I  had  been  suddenly  wounded  it  came 
to  me  that  in  that  formal  marking  of  my 
attainment  to  womanhood  mother  had  given 
neither  her  home,  nor  the  help  of  her  hands, 
nor  her  own  presence.  She  had  never  seen 
the  house  where  it  had  taken  place.  My 
friends  were  "  strangers  "  to  her.  I  wanted 
to  tell  her  about  it.  But  the  words  lay  dead 
upon  my  tongue. 

Mother  and  I  had  come  to  the  place  where 
we  could  no  longer  remain  together.  I  can 
not  state  the  tragedy  of  that  hour  better  than 
in  just  those  words.  I  did  not  then  realise 
what  it  meant  to  mother  to  see  the  diverging 
point  of  her  life  and  mine.  I  had  not  then  a 
little  son  of  my  own. 


[133] 


XVII 

NOW  mother  was  not  only  out  of  the 
activities  and  interests  of  my  life  as 
she  had  been  during  my  high  school  days; 
she  was  also  out  of  the  understanding  of  my 
life. 

The  college  life  surrounded  me  like  a  great 
and  beautiful  sea,  filling  every  hour  of  the 
day.  My  days  were  spent  on  the  green 
campus,  in  the  sunny  lecture  rooms.  My 
holidays  were  with  my  friends.  The  vaca 
tions  which  had  formerly  meant  so  much  time 
that  mother  and  I  could  spend  in  work 
together,  I  now  spent  away  from  home.  One 
summer  I  lived  at  a  farm  house.  My  friends 
and  I  visited  neighbouring  farms.  I  saw  a 
cow  milked.  I  plucked  my  first  pink  little 
radish,  and  joined  the  others  in  laughter 
because  I  felt  guilty  when  I  ate  it.  All  the 
pastoral  beauty  which  we  had  seen  in  the 

[134] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

poems  of  Milton  and  Horace  and  Words 
worth  I  found  in  the  world  of  to-day.  How 
beautiful  life  could  be ! 

I  was  at  home  very  little.  Mother  and  I 
spoke  briefly  and  constrainedly  when  I  was. 
It  came  to  be  that  often  I  did  not  even  note 
the  little  changes  that  were  made  in  the  house, 
which  the  others  discussed  so  animatedly, 
until  mother  eagerly  drew  my  attention  to  the 
new  chair  she  had  bought,  or  to  the  new  table 
cloth  she  had  just  finished  embroidering. 
But  mother  did  not  ask  me,  I  now  remember, 
about  those  things  that  were  part  of  my  daily 
life.  I  was  an  alien  in  my  mother's  home. 

I  loathed  it  at  home.  Oh,  it  was  not  the 
poverty  I  minded!  I  have  never  wanted 
money.  But  the  women  who  came  in  their 
slovenly  dresses,  content  in  their  stupidity  and 
their  cloth,  the  men  who  spoke  intolerantly 
and  without  understanding,  of  religion  and 
economics,  the  pale  girls  who  simpered  and 
toiled  with  the  one  aim  of  a  dreary  married 
life,  the  young  men  who  were  untidy  and  dull 
or  overbearing  and  conceited  when  they  had 
education  —  that  was  what  I  saw  in  the 

[135] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

ghetto.  I  could  not  look  into  its  heart  as  I 
since  have  done. 

And  at  college  were  opened  to  my  eyes 
windows  upon  splendid  and  beautiful  visions. 
With  my  classmates  I  saw  the  ideal  of  the 
new  women  which  we,  the  college  girls  of  this 
country,  were  to  be.  I  heard  of  the  serene 
and  wise  and  conscious  motherhood,  the 
strong  and  sane  and  effective  women  in  pro 
fessions,  the  fine  and  cultured  wives  that  it 
was  our  destiny  to  become.  We  were  the 
new  womanhood  that  the  great  universities 
were  sending  out  into  America. 

My  college  friends  were  already  preparing 
for  that  effective  fortunate  life  of  the  cultured 
woman.  We  were  planning  for  Commence 
ment  Day. 

Others  with  me  had  made  the  pilgrimage 
from  the  narrow  ghetto  streets  into  the  broad 
avenue  of  American  culture.  There  were 
those  who  had  ideals,  who  looked  to  a  vision 
in  the  future  beyond  the  drab  daily  life. 
They  with  me  were  facing  the  problem : 
"  What  shall  I  do  now  that  I  have  become 
part  of  America?  "  I  knew  well  what  those 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

boys  from  the  narrow,  crooked  streets  about 
us  would  do.  They  would  open  little  offices 
in  dingy  ghetto  homes;  they  would  practice 
among  sad-faced  ghetto  clients  who  would  not 
even  be  able  to  afford  the  fees  that  they  would 
be  asked  to  pay.  With  all  of  America's 
wealth  of  training,  ideals,  in  their  hands, 
those  boys  whom  I  knew  would  yet  be  unable 
to  leave  the  ghetto.  They  would  remain  tied 
fast  to  the  old  immigrant  environment. 

That  was  what  I  might  do.  Why,  I 
realised  poignantly,  I  would  never  live  in 
America !  I  would  live  in  a  little  Russia 
crowded  into  an  American  slum. 

All  my  life,  all  my  interests,  centred  in 
the  college  walls,  with  nothing  beyond  them. 
When  the  college  days  would  be  over  this 
wonderful  world  would  disappear  forever 
from  me  like  an  enchanted  castle  that  had 
faded  in  the  night. 

During  the  second  semester  of  my  senior 
year  I  walked  about  dazed,  not  meeting 
mother's  eyes.  To  my  classmates  there  were 
great  vistas  of  life  after  the  sadness  of  the 
graduating  day.  There  were  homes  in  which 

[137] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

they  could  come  to  bring  their  work,  their 
pleasures.  But  for  me  —  there  was  nothing. 

One  day  in  the  winter  of  1910  mother  came 
to  me  to  say  timidly,  "  Are  you  ill?  " 

I  shook  my  head. 

There  followed  the  strained  conversation 
that  had  become  usual  between  us,  although 
then  I  had  not  even  noticed  that  it  was 
strained.  Suddenly  I  cried  out,  "  Mother,  I 
can't  stand  this.  I  can't  live  here.  I  can't 
live  this  life.  Oh,  father  was  right;  he  has 
been  right  along!  I  wish  you  had  never  let 
me  go  to  high  school  or  to  college.  It  was  a 
mistake !  Oh,  a  bitter  mistake !  I  see  what 
I  wish  to  be ;  but  oh !  how  can  a  girl  ever  get 
away  from  —  here !  " 

Mother  stood  as  if  I  had  struck  her. 
"  Not  a  mistake,"  she  said  in  a  very  low  voice. 

But  I  cried  myself  to  sleep. 

The  following  day  she  asked  me,  "  Is  it  — 
we  who  are  —  hard  for  you  to  live  with?  " 

Little  mother!  How  tortured  you  must 
have  been  all  that  night  as  you  lay  thinking 
that  out. 

Of  course  I  told  her,  quickly,  with  all  my 


MY     MOTHER     AND     1 

heart,  that  it  could  never  be  she  or  father 
who  would  be  "  strange  "  to  me.  "  It's  the 
house,  the  dirty  street,"  I  tried  to  explain  to 
her.  "  It's  like  living  in  a  foreign  land 
here." 

Mother  nodded.     "  We'll  see,"  she  said. 

I  knew  she  meant  she  would  speak  to 
father.  For  months  she  spoke  to  father. 
She  tried  to  persuade  him  to  move  away,  to 
take  a  little  home,  "  with  a  garden  and  a 
porch,  like  those  near  the  park." 

But  it  was  in  vain  she  spoke.  Father  could 
not  even  see  that  what  I  hated,  nor  why  I 
loathed  it.  He  liked  the  "  happy  crowds  " 
of  dirty,  pitifully  underfed  children  "  play 
ing  "  in  the  filthy  gutters;  he  did  not  even 
perceive  the  unspeakable  plumbing  in  the 
yards  about  us.  That  the  first  floor  of  the 
house  down  the  street  contained  men  of  such 
character  that  the  police  knew  them  by  sight 
held  no  terror  for  father.  As  he  said,  all  his 
friends,  his  synagogue,  were  in  the  neighbour 
hood.  All  his  memories  during  the  last 
eighteen  years  were  centred  in  those  crooked 
streets.  Mother  could  not  alter  him.  For 

[139] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

him  the  ghetto,  so  real  to  me  and  to  other 
young  people  like  me,  does  not  exist.  For 
father  lives  in  a  world  altogether  cut  off 
from  the  world  about  him;  his  is  a  world  of 
the  past,  a  world  built  by  the  ancient  rabbis 
in  whose  footsteps  he  walks.  He  said  to  me 
one  day  slowly,  "  I  belong  to  the  fifteenth  cen 
tury  —  and  you,  my  daughter,  to  the  twen 
tieth."  Mother  and  I  could  not  make  him 
understand. 

A  new  and  sudden  and  fierce  revolt  rose  in 
me.  I  resolved  that,  since  my  parents  would 
not  permit  me  to  live  my  new  life  according 
to  my  new  standards  with  them,  I  must  break 
my  life  from  theirs.  I  must  leave  Soho 
alone.  I  resolved  to  go  to  New  York  after 
graduation,  to  live  as  do  thousands  of  young 
professional  women,  young  American  women. 
I  do  not  know  now  how  I,  a  girl,  found  the 
courage  to  plan  this,  this  course  so  unheard 
of. 

On  the  solemn  fast  day,  the  day  of  Atone 
ment,  mother  came  to  me  to  bless  me  as  has 
been  the  custom  in  the  family  for  years. 
Father  had  given  me  his  blessing  almost  in 
[140] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

silence,  and  had  gone  to  services.  We  were 
alone,  mother  and  I,  in  the  house.  And  as 
I  kissed  her  I  said  with  lips  dry,  "  Mother,  I 
am  going  away:"  Mother  dropped  her 
hands.  "  Please,"  I  begged.  "  I  can't  live 
here  longer,  mother.  Mother,  I  hate  it 
here !  " 

"  Of  course,"  mother  said  to  me.  Mother 
said  not  one  word  more. 

The  following  week  she  came  to  me  to  tell 
me  that  she  was  preparing  for  my  going 
away,  that  I  must  not  worry.  u  Do  what  is 
necessary  for  your  plans,"  she  said. 

There  were  such  stormy  scenes  while  I 
prepared  to  "  go  away."  How  my  mother's 
brothers  and  my  father's  sisters  protested. 
How  black  their  prophecies  were.  How  they 
cried  that  I  was  "  an  example  "  to  their  chil 
dren.  I  am  the  oldest  of  all  the  clan  of 
cousins  in  our  family,  and  to  them  I  presented 
the  unparalleled  example  of  a  girl  at  high 
school,  and  at  college  —  and  now  this!  One 
day  I  came  in  to  find  them  gathered  in  solemn 
council  upon  me.  I  was  called  in.  I  listened 
with  cheeks  aflame.  I  had  come  to  think  of 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

love  as  of  something  that  came  unasked, 
beautifully,  magically.  And  they  spoke  of 
marriage  as  one  speaks  of  a  family  arrange 
ment. 

There  was  much  I  wished  to  tell  them. 
But  when  I  would  enter  a  room  to  find  a  group 
heatedly  discussing  me,  mother  would  begin 
to  speak  in  the  sudden  dead  silence,  nerv 
ously,  without  stopping,  amidst  all  the  un 
spoken  disapproval,  until  I  left. 

I  had  been  saving  all  that  which  I  did  not 
require  while  at  college.  It  seemed  a  very 
large  sum  to  me.  I  wrote  to  New  York  to 
that  school  where  I  wished  to  prepare  myself 
for  the  profession  I  had  chosen.  The 
autumn  after  I  graduated  from  college  I 
went  to  New  York.  I  left  home. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

IN  New  York  I  not  only  studied  in  an 
American  school,  but  I  lived  —  lived !  — 
in  an  American  home.  Although  I  had 
lived  in  America  for  nineteen  years,  it  was 
now  for  the  first  time  in  my  life,  as  a  woman 
of  twenty-one,  that  I  became  part  of  an 
American  home,  a  home  that  was  not  a 
foreign  spot  in  America.  For  the  first  time 
in  my  life  I  lived  in  a  home  which  mother  did 
not  make  home.  I  was  cut  off  completely 
from  the  ghetto,  from  Soho.  I  had  become 
completely  a  part  of  America.  There  were 
no  days  now  to  divide  between  the  American 
life  at  college,  and  the  ghetto  life  in  Soho. 
For  me  the  conflict  between  the  two  worlds 
was  over. 

At  the  school  in  New  York  there  was  an 
entire  group  which  had  come  from  the  Soho 
of  New  York  —  from  the  East  Side.  In  the 


MY     MOTHER     AND     1 

lecture  hours  they  sat  together.  Walking 
they  were  companions.  They  had  lunches  at 
the  same  table.  With  me  they  were  shy  and 
embarrassed.  Had  I  not  understood  I  would 
have  been  bewildered  and  offended,  but  I 
realised  that  they  were  keeping  me  out  of 
their  life  because  they  were  afraid  of  the 
other  circle  of  which  I  was  a  member.  At 
home  also  I  had  known  young  men  and 
women  who  had  been  afraid  to  leave  Soho, 
afraid  to  become  part  of  the  world  outside 
of  Soho.  I  did  not  wish  to  lose  the  one 
group  at  the  school,  nor  the  other.  I  wanted 
the  American  enviroment  in  which  I  felt  at 
ease  and  happy,  but  I  hoped  also  not  to  lose 
my  old  life.  Now  that  I  was  away  from 
them  the  people  whom  I  had  known  in  Soho, 
they  seemed  to  me  infinitely  dear.  I  saw 
their  suffering,  the  qualities  which  made  them 
fine  and  good. 

There  was  only  one  of  that  small  group 
at  school  whom  I  really  came  to  know.  She 
was  a  tall  slender  girl  with  ardent  eyes  and 
the  most  winning  childlike  smile  on  her  seri 
ous  spectacled  face.  She  had  suffered  hun- 


MY     MOTHER     AND     1 

ger  and  loneliness  and  poverty,  for  a  princi 
ple.  She  was  preparing  to  enter  social  work 
in  order  to  continue  in  this  new  land  what  she 
had  been  doing  as  a  young  girl  in  her  Russian 
city.  She  would  speak  with  unenvious  won 
der  of  my  home  in  New  York,  of  the  supe 
riority  of  my  good  fortune  to  her  own. 

One  evening  at  her  boarding  place  I  met  a 
number  of  her  friends,  students  in  medical 
schools,  in  dental  schools,  men  and  women 
much  like  those  I  knew  in  Soho,  except  that 
these,  like  my  friend,  spoke  with  a  foreign 
accent  revealing  the  speech  of  their  childhood 
and  youth  in  Russia. 

Late  in  the  evening,  after  we  had  talked 
about  all  the  idealistic  and  philosophic  sub 
jects  under  the  sun,  with  animation  and  eager 
ness,  and  all  of  us  were  tired,  and  our  throats 
were  dry,  and  we  were  all  convinced  that  we 
were  each  right,  but  that  our  neighbour  was 
a  very  clever  fellow,  we  sat  silent  at  the  little 
table  in  the  tiny  kitchen.  And  then  some  one 
said,  "  Let  us  sing." 

At  college  groups  of  us  meeting  at  ball 
games,  at  Hallowe'en  parties,  in  picnic 

[145] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

crowds,  would  sing  often.  We  would  choose 
most  often  "  Auld  Lang  Syne  "  or  "  Heidel 
berg,"  "  Gaudeamus  Igitur,"  and  "  Love's 
old  Sweet  Song,"  always  ending  with  our  own 
college  verses  set  to  music. 

Our  hostess,  her  childlike  eager  smile  ap 
pearing  suddenly  cried  out,  "  Sing!  Let  us 
begin,  well  — !  "  And  she  herself  broke  out 
in  a  little  enthusiastic  soprano.  I  was  never 
so  startled  in  my  life.  For  they  sang  with 
all  their  hearts,  with  tears  in  their  eyes  —  the 
Marseillaise.  And  then  the  room  rang  with 
melodies  of  stirring  Russian  hymns  and  the 
songs  in  their  native  tongue,  songs  of  aspira 
tion  for  freedom,  and  songs  of  courage  under 
oppression. 

To  all  those  young  men  and  women  Amer 
ica  meant  a  place  to  which  one  brings  ideals. 
America  stood  for  liberty,  the  liberty  which 
Shelley,  whom  they  all  loved,  held  sacred. 
It  was  of  liberty  that  they  were  singing. 
They  spoke  of  America  with  love,  with  grati 
tude,  yet  never  for  a  moment  did  they  forget 
that  other  country  —  their  "  mother  coun 
try  "  whose  tongue  they  spoke. 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

I  sat  there  as  one  outside.  I  was  alone  in 
all  that  ardent  group  singing  the  songs  of 
another  land.  I  had  always  felt  that  Amer 
ica  was  my  birthright.  I  had  always  felt 
that,  like  many  a  child  whose  parents  have 
remained  in  the  Sohos  of  the  land,  I  had  been 
caught  in  some  eddy  that  had  pulled  me  away 
for  many  years  from  that  which  was  mine. 
I  knew  that  evening  that  America  had  always 
been  mine.  Among  those  young  men  and 
women  with  dreams  and  desires,  even  with  a 
problem  like  my  own  (though  none  of  them 
knew  it)  I  was  a  stranger.  For  I  had  not 
one  moment,  not  one  inkling  of  the  feeling, 
which  stirred  them,  except  as  one  feels  for 
that  which  is  noble  and  fine  —  outside  one. 

My  mother  country  had  always  been  — 
America. 

It  was  only  my  home  that  had  not  been 
American. 

A  new  and  clear  ideal  of  the  American 
home  came  to  grow  in  my  heart  during  the 
months  that  followed. 

In  the  four  walls  which  enclose  that  which 
I  call  so  simply  ".an  American  home  "  lie  the 

[147] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

treasures  of  the  world.  From  the  doors  of 
each  American  home  wind  invisible  paths 
leading  to  the  beauty  and  art  of  all  ages, 
which  our  cities  keep  for  us  in  public  gal 
leries.  From  the  threshold  of  each  home 
spreads  a  great  highway  taking  our  children 
to  the  learning  and  wisdom  of  poet  and  sage 
in  the  public  schools  of  our  country.  In  its 
four  walls  live  American  citizens,  who  each 
have  the  privilege  to  help  make  those  laws 
which  govern  a  great  nation  conceived  in  the 
spirit  of  liberty.  That  was  the  idea  which 
grew  in  my  heart  during  the  months  in  New 
York.  And  the  new  life,  with  its  work,  its 
ideals,  lay  like  a  shining  road  before  my  feet, 
before  my  eyes. 

In  the  spring  I  went  for  a  brief  rest  to  the 
country  home  of  one  of  the  settlement  houses 
where  I  had  been  preparing  myself  for  my 
work.  The  great  frame  house  stood  by  the 
side  of  a  rippling  bay  close  to  the  Long  Island 
shore.  There  came  to  the  house  in  that 
early  frosty  spring  some  of  the  tired  workers 
and  leaders  in  the  settlement  centre  in  the 
city,  to  take  advantage  of  the  peace  and  quiet 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

of  the  empty  rooms.  It  was  too  early  still 
for  the  people  in  the  tenements  crowded  about 
the  settlement,  to  come  down  for  pleasure  and 
recreation,  But  there  was  a  frail  little  Jew 
ish  lad,  with  marks  of  the  East  Side  on  his 
thin  face.  There  was  a  smiling  narrow- 
chested  Italian  woman  who  was  seeking  a  re 
prieve  from  death.  There  was  a  dour-faced 
old  Scotchwoman  with  large  bones  and  hu 
morous  eyes  who  smiled  at  her  own  pain. 
Here  I  lived  with  immigrants  and  I  was  not 
of  them. 

My  particular  comrade  was  a  young  south 
ern  girl  who  had  broken  from  the  traditions 
of  her  Virginian  family  to  come  up  north  to 
study  nursing,  as  I  had  broken  from  the  old- 
world  traditions  of  my  family  to  enter  the 
field  of  work  for  women.  We  spoke  often  of 
the  difference  in  the  beginnings  of  our  lives; 
and  we  saw  with  wonder  how  like  were  we  in 
thought,  in  speech,  and  attitude,  and  interests. 
Living  there  together  in  that  house  by  the  sea, 
we  were  two  young  women  who  were  friends, 
and  who  were  twenty-one. 

One  day  we  walked  along  the  shore  of  the 

[149] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

bay,  over  a  bare  sandy  neck  of  land  to  a  row 
of  great  white  sand  piles  that  stood  sharp 
against  the  clear  sky.  We  held  our  caps  in 
the  sweeping  wind.  Our  cheeks  were  warm 
with  the  keen  cold  of  the  early  spring-and- 
winter  weather.  We  climbed  up  one  of  the 
sandy  mounds,  falling  back,  laughing  and 
pushing  on  again,  the  southern  girl  eager  and 
oddly  smiling.  And  suddenly  there  we  were 
at  the  top  of  the  mound  that  had  stood  like 
part  of  a  white  wall  between  the  sky  and  us. 
Before  me  lay  a  great  foaming  vast  expanse 
of  water,  rushing  to  my  feet,  flowing  back, 
coming  from  the  horizon  to  us  two  alone 
there  on  the  measureless  shore,  retreating 
from  us  into  the  invisible  distance.  u  This 
is  the  Atlantic  Ocean,"  said  my  companion 
breathlessly.  But  I  did  not  find  it  possible 
to  answer  her.  I  stood  as  if  I  were  alone, 
at  the  edge  of  the  great  waters  upon  which  I 
had  been  brought  as  a  baby  by  mother  to 
America,  and  which  I  had  never  seen  again 
until  this  moment.  Far  out  on  the  waters 
we  saw  a  ship,  a  faint  grey;  a  ship  bearing 
strangers  to  us  in  America. 
[150] 


CHAPTER  XIX 

1HAD  not  been  very  practical  nor  very 
wise  when  I  made  my  arrangements  to 
"  study  and  live  "  in  New  York.  When  I  re 
turned  from  my  rest  I  was  confronted  again 
by  the  problem  I  had  faced  before  I  went 
away.  I  found  that  I  had  hardly  enough  to 
pay  for  room  rent  and  car-fare.  I  tried  to 
live  on  one  meal  a  day.  Then  I  wrote  to 
mother. 

I  shall  not  forget  that  letter  from  mother. 
It  seemed  to  be  brimming  over  with  her.  It 
was  a  letter  full  of  love  and  such  happiness, 
such  a  full  joy,  as  if  I  had  been  lost  and  she 
had  found  me  again.  Mother  was  simply 
too  full  of  the  joy  of  being  close  to  her  daugh 
ter's  needs,  able  to  help  her,  to  know  that  she 
was  really  needed.  Many  times  did  I  read 
that  letter  from  my  mother.  It  was  as  if 
she  had  come  herself  to  bring  me  her  love  and 
her  comforting.  I  knew  then,  as  I  read  and 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

re-read  her  letter,  how  lonely  mother  had 
been  when  I  had  been  at  college,  how  far 
from  her  she  felt  I  had  grown.  In  the  light 
of  her  joy  at  our  coming  close  again  I  real 
ised  for  the  first  time  that  during  the  last 
years  I  had  left  not  only  Soho  behind  me ;  I 
had  almost  left  MOTHER  behind  me.  Jhe 
thought  terrified  me. 

And  mother  had  suffered. 

I  wrote  long  letters  to  mother  after  that 
illuminating  letter  from  her.  I  was  wiser 
now.  I  did  not  tell  her  of  my  school,  nor  of 
my  friends,  nor  even  of  the  new  enviroment 
in  which  I  lived,  for  I  knew  that  they  made 
her  feel  lost  and  strange.  I  began  to  under 
stand  that  these  were  not  the  things  which 
were  a  connecting  bond  between  us,  but  that 
they  were  rather  obstacles  standing  between 
us.  I  could  not  explain  them  to  mother,  and 
my  nearness  to  them  made  her  feel  that  I 
must  be  far  from  her.  Instead  I  wrote  to 
her  of  that  which  we  both  had  in  common  — 
our  memories,  our  acquaintances  in  Soho.  I 
asked  if  the  copper  pots  and  the  candle-sticks 
were  kept  polished  to  her  liking.  We  wrote 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

of  my  younger  sisters,  and  of  my  cousins, 
who,  as  my  uncles  and  aunts  had  darkly 
prophesied,  were  indeed  following  "  my  ex 
ample  "  by  going  to  high  school;  even  the 
girls  insisted  on  the  privilege.  But  strange 
to  say  —  their  parents  were  proud  of  them  1 
I  wrote  to  mother  of  the  plays  I  saw,  of  per 
sonalities  I  met.  They  were  not  famous  peo 
ple  of  whom  I  wrote;  they  were  simply  my 
friends,  intelligent  and  interesting,  and  to 
mother  I  tried  to  make  them  as  real  as  they 
were  dear  to  me.  Often  I  used  to  think  of 
the  letters  I  wrote  as  a  child  in  Soho.  Now 
I  was  writing  only  to  my  own  mother,  and 
only  for  myself. 

And  I  wrote  to  mother  about  my  lover. 
For  my  husband  and  I  met  at  college  in  New 
York.  Mother  was  hardly  able  to  believe 
that  I  had  fallen  in  love.  I  could  imagine 
from  what  my  sisters  told  me  how  she  told 
every  one,  everywhere,  that  her  daughter  had 
fallen  in  love  with,  and  was  loved  by,  a  mar 
vellous,  super-human,  superlative  male.  I 
did  not  describe  my  lover  except  to  tell  my 
parents  that  he  was  an  American. 

[153] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

I  would  not  permit  my  lover  to  tell  his  peo 
ple  about  us  until  he  had  seen  my  home, 
my  folks,  my  environment.  With  all  the 
new  and  beautiful  and  intimate  meaning 
that  an  American  home  held  to  me  I  went 
to  my  mother's  home  in  Soho  to  wait  for  him 
there. 

Mother  met  me  at  the  station  where  she 
had  been  waiting  all  day  long  impatiently. 
She  held  me  close  to  her.  She  kissed  me  on 
the  lips.  She  overflowed  with  joy.  "  So 
you  have  fallen  in  love.  You  are  to  be  a 
bride, "  she  repeated  until  we  came  home,  as 
we  walked  through  the  cluttered  streets  from 
the  station  to  our  house.  I  wished  her  to 
tell  me  what  she  had  been  doing,  what  she  had 
been  planning,  if  there  had  been  weddings  or 
births  in  the  family.  But  mother  only  smiled 
and  said  that  she  had  been  altogether  too 
much  occupied  with  other  things  to  know  how 
friends  and  relatives  fared.  She  wanted  to 
hear  everything  about  "  him." 

Mother  and  I  sat  in  the  dark  little  dining- 
room  or  in  the  hot  kitchen  preparing  for  my 
lover's  coming.  "  And  are  his  people  very 

[154] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

different  from  us  ?  "  she  would  ask  me,  but 
would  continue,  "  To  think  that  I'll  really 
have  a  son-in-law,  yours  yet,  childie." 

She  spoke  of  the  betrothal  feast  that  we 
must  have,  of  the  cakes  and  the  wine  that 
must  be  prepared.  Her  eyes  would  shine  to 
me  with  a  soft  radiance  when  we  looked  at 
one  another.  I  could  imagine  all  that  she 
was  planning,  all  that  she  was  remembering. 
She  spoke  often  now  of  that  day  long  past 
when,  in  her  own  white  wedding  gown,  she 
had  come  under  the  wedding  canopy  to  be 
come  the  bride  of  my  father.  She  recalled 
how  her  mother  had  kissed  her,  weeping  to 
see  her  only  daughter  married,"  but  rejoicing 
nevertheless  that  her  son-in-law  was  so 
learned  in  Holy  Law."  Mother  quoted  to 
me  many  a  phrase  from  the  lips  so  long 
closed  in  death.  "  She  was  like  the  women 
in  the  proverbs,"  said  mother  proudly. 

She  had  lived  near  her  mother,  she  told  me 
wistfully,  but  on  that  wedding  day  she  did  not 
foresee  that  four  years  later  she  was  to  leave 
her  mother  as  one  leaves  the  dead,  for  she 
came  to  America,  and  her  mother  died  with- 

[155] 


MY.     MOTHER     AND     I 

out  ever  seeing  her  again.  We  sat  without 
speaking  for  a  long  time  after  mother  had 
spoken.  Presently  mother  said  very  ten 
derly,  "  I  am  glad  you  are  to  be  a  wife. 
When  one's  eldest  daughter  marries  it  is  as 
if  she  were  both  daughter  and  little  sister," 
she  added  with  a  profound  sweetness  that 
made  me  feel  that  my  heart  was  too  full. 

One  evening  mother  looked  at  me  archly 
after  one  of  our  talks.  Then  she  said, 
"  Come,  childie."  And  I  found  out  the 
secret,  that  which  "  had  made  it  impossible  " 
for  mother  to  care  "  what  happened  to 
friends  and  relatives  "  because  she  had  been 
so  "  occupied  with  other  things.7'  Unknown 
to  me,  for  years,  almost  since  the  day  on 
which  I  had  graduated  from  high  school, 
mother  had  been  keeping  and  increasing  that 
secret.  In  a  huge  wooden  box  there  lay 
piled  piece  upon  piece  of  embroidered  linens 
for  bride  and  bed,  and  fine  laces  ready  to  be 
used  for  years  to  come,  as  well  as  hand-made 
samplers  fashioned  after  the  pattern  of  her 
own  girlhood.  There  was  a  table  cloth  of 
black  "  fisher's  net,"  as  mother  called  the 
[156] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

loose  web-like  background  which  she  had 
woven,  and  upon  which  she  had  embroidered 
in  green  and  red  wool,  a  loving  dove  sitting 
on  a  bough  above  my  initials  and  the  date. 
Of  this  she  was  most  proud,  because  she  her 
self  had  not  had  such  a  piece  in  her  own 
trousseau. 

"  Will  it  do  ?  "  she  asked.  It  needed  no 
pretended  enthusiasm  to  praise  her  handi 
work,  to  delight  in  it. 

But  how  her  eyes  shone  when  I  asked  her 
if  I  could  have  some  of  the  laces  from  her 
own  pillow  slips  and  table  covers  put  away 
for  remembrance  at  the  bottom  of  the  trunk. 
From  one  pillow  cover  I  took  two  wide  in- 
sertings  of  hand-made  lace  that  mother  and 
grandmother  had  made  together  while  they 
waited  for  father  to  come  to  take  his  bride. 

Mother  insisted  also  that  I  take  the  two 
heavy  brass  candle-sticks  made  for  her  at  her 
own  wedding  by  the  village  coppersmith,  and 
brought  to  America  into  our  little  kitchen. 
She  pressed  upon  me  also  a  brass  mortar  and 
pestle  for  "  my  kitchen."  When  I  asked  for 
the  old  copper  fish-pot  which  had  been  made 

[157] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

for  grandmother,  and  later  given  to  mother, 
and  which  had  been  used  by  us  for  so  many 
years  to  cook  the  Sabbath  fish,  mother  was 
delighted  into  laughter.  "  You  must  cook 
good  fish  in  it,"  she  adjured  me  happily. 

The  kitchen  was  crowded  all  day  long  with 
women  who  came  to  look  at  me  with  a  new 
glance  of  camaraderie;  I,  too,  was  to  be  a 
wife  as  were  they !  With  them  mother  spoke 
briskly  and  definitely  upon  a  most  important 
topic;  they  were  filling  the  feather-beds  and 
pillows  which  mother  had  made  for  me,  as 
her  mother  in  Poland  had  had  hers  made  also. 
Of  each  woman  mother  inquired  rigidly 
whether  she  had  remembered  that  only  the 
breasts  of  the  geese  were  to  be  plucked,  "  and 
each  feather  picked  "  !  They  would  come, 
their  heads  covered  in  an  aureole  of  down, 
and  with  great  bags  under  their  arms.  The 
bags  were  full  of  soft  down.  They  seated 
themselves  in  the  little  bricked  square  yard, 
and  while  mother,  with  eyes  snapping  and 
brilliant,  supervised  them,  they  filled  the 
cases  she  had  already  sewn,  waiting  for  the 
cloud-soft  contents. 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

Sometimes  in  the  evenings  I  sat  watching 
mother  at  her  work,  and  we  said  nothing  for 
many  moments,  for  my  mind  was  full  of  mem 
ories  of  all  that  had  happened  in  the  preced 
ing  year  in  New  York.  You  cannot  imagine 
how  strange  it  seemed  to  me  to  come  to 
mother's  home  after  the  homes  I  had  shared 
in  New  York.  Perhaps  if  you  contrast  your 
own  home  with  the  one  which  I  have  de 
scribed  you  will  understand  how  I  felt. 

Mother  would  not  let  me  help  prepare  for 
"  him."  She  washed  and  scrubbed  and 
ironed  and  cooked  and  baked.  Mother  feels 
she's  not  being  hospitable  if  her  guests  leave 
her  table  with  unimpaired  digestion.  The 
house  was  full  of  sweet  and  toothsome  dain 
ties  to  give  him  delight ;  its  walls  were  gleam 
ing  with  welcome  for  him. 

I  went  alone  to  meet  him,  to  bring  him  to 
my  home.  I  shall  not  speak  of  that.  But 
we  knew  that  we  loved  one  another,  and  that 
nothing  mattered. 

At  the  threshold  of  my  home  mother  ran 
out  with  her  characteristic  almost  childlike 
eagerness  to  meet  him.  I  cannot  forget  her 

[159] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

face  as  she  saw  him.  They  tried  to  speak  to 
one  another.  And  my  lover  knew  only  Eng 
lish,  and  my  mother  only  Yiddish.  They  had 
no  common  plane  on  which  to  meet,  no  com 
mon  thought,  nor  interest,  nor  memory. 
Even  in  me  each  saw  a  different  person. 

We  went  into  the  house,  my  lover  and  I. 
Mother  silently  followed  us. 

To  me  the  days  flew. 

So  we  were  married.  And  mother  said 
good-bye  to  me.  And  I  went  from  her  with 
a  stranger  whose  language  she  did  not  un 
derstand  into  a  life  she  did  not  know.  I  left 
her,  as  she  had  left  her  mother  when  she  went 
on  the  far  voyage  to  America. 


[i  60] 


CHAPTER  XX 

MY  friends  are  now  my  husband's 
friends.  My  home  is  that  kind  of  a 
home  in  which  he  has  always  lived.  With 
my  marriage  I  entered  into  a  new  avenue. 
We  have  travelled.  We  have  worked  at 
tasks  we  believed  in  and  loved.  We  have  our 
little  son.  I  have  not  written  much  to 
mother  about  my  life.  My  letters  have  been 
—  just  letters.  Her  own  letters  have  been 
growing  briefer  these  last  years.  She  never 
came  to  see  me  in  my  home. 

It  was  our  little  son  who  was  the  real  cause 
of  her  coming  finally.  I  thought  of  his  birth 
as  the  tearing  down  of  that  barrier  that  had 
come  between  us.  Mother  was  intoxicated 
with  the  delight  of  her  first  grandchild,  the 
first  child  of  her  first  child.  "  Now  we  un 
derstand  each  other  better,  now  that  we  both 
are  mothers,  my  daughter,"  she  wrote  to  me, 
[161] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

not  knowing  how  much  more  than  she  meant 
to  say  her  letters  told.  I,  too,  felt  that  in 
my  own  motherhood  I  saw  the  explanation 
now  for  mother's  unquestioning  unceasing 
striving  and  toiling  and  hoping  and  planning 
and  achieving  for  her  children.  "  Now  I 
can  find  the  joy  of  all  mothers  again.  I  can 
find  my  lost  young  motherhood  in  your  child," 
she  wrote.  "  I  am  coming  to  my  grandson." 
Mother  had  not  travelled  since  she  took 
that  long  trip,  twenty-five  years  ago,  from 
Poland  to  America,  to  come  to  her  husband. 
And  now  she  was  preparing  to  come  from 
Soho  —  to  us,  to  her  first  grandchild.  We 
were  excited  as  the  letters  from  home  told  us 
that  they  were.  Day  after  day,  my  sisters 
wrote  to  us,  women  came  to  mother,  giving 
her  messages  to  take  to  me,  whom  they  had 
known  so  well  as  a  child.  They  brought 
mother  cake,  and  jellies,  and  wines,  as  if  she 
were  about  to  travel  a  year  instead  of  one 
night.  My  aunts  came  to  help  her  sew  her 
clothes,  my  uncles  came  to  pack  her  suitcases. 
It  was  as  if  all  Soho  were  coming  here  to  us 
in  the  person  of  mother.  Father  hurried 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

back  and  forth  securing  mileages,  a  berth. 
He  carefully  explained  to  mother  what,  a 
berth  was,  and  warned  her  above  all  not  to 
forget  to  give  the  black  man,  when  he  gave 
her  her  hat,  a  quarter.  My  sisters  wrote 
such  dear  letters,  describing  it  all  there  at 
home. 

We  could  hardly  wait.  Our  little  boy 
asked  every  day  for  u  grammy."  There 
came  a  deluge  of  telegrams  to  us,  which 
clearly  told  us  the  haste  and  nervousness  in 
the  little  home  in  Soho,  and  we  knew  that 
mother  was  on  her  way  to  us. 

She  came  in  the  morning.  She  did  not 
stop  to  kiss  me,  nor  to  look  about  her,  but  as 
soon  as  she  entered  my  home  she  cried  breath 
lessly,  "  Where  is  my  grandchild?"  And 
she  held  him  to  her,  and  the  tears  filled  her 
eyes.  "Such  a  boy!  But  a.  boy!"  she 
cried.  We  had  written  to  her  that  our 
boy  was  speaking  now.  She  sat  down  beside 
him,  and  she  crooned  love-words  to  him. 

Son  is  a  friendly  little  lad.  I  felt  that,  if 
I  left  them  alone  together,  he  and  mother 
would  grow  close  in  a  day  or  two.  I  peeped 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

one  morning  into  the  nursery.  Mother  was 
standing,  looking  dully  at  the  spotless  baby- 
cot,  the  white  wicker  chairs,  the  little  wash 
able  rugs  on  the  floor,  the  gay  pictures  on 
the  white  walls.  Her  worn  plump  hands 
were  folded  one  upon  the  other  in  a  gesture 
that  I  know.  Little  son  was  in  a  corner, 
gravely  building  a  tower.  Little  son  has 
been  taught  that  he  must  play  without  de 
manding  help  or  attention  from  adults  about 
him,  that  "  son  must  help  himself."  In  Soho 
little  boys  are  spanked  and  scolded  and  car 
ried  and  physicked  and  loved  and  fed  all 
day  and  all  night. 

Mother  called  to  little  son  a  quaint  love 
name,  and  he  turned  to  her  with  his  bright 
smile,  understanding  her  love  tone.  Then  he 
quietly  turned  away  from  her  to  his  toys 
again.  And  mother  stood  there  in  that 
strange  white  baby  world  which  was  her 
grandson's.  Perhaps  she  was  thinking  of 
what  she  had  thought  to  find  him,  like  one  of 
the  children  of  her  own  young  motherhood, 
dear  burdens  that  one  bore  night  and  day. 
She  was  afraid  to  touch  the  crib,  to  soil  the 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

spotless  rugs.  Here  was  her  grandchild, 
they  were  together,  it  is  true.  And  her 
grandchild  had  no  need  of  her.  She  felt 
alien,  unnecessary. 

I  felt  the  tears  in  my  eyes.  I  ran  in,  called 
son  to  come  to  play  with  grammy  and  mother. 
He  came  readily,  laughingly,  speaking  his 
baby  phrases  that  are  so  adorably  like  the 
words  we  adults,  his  parents,  use.  I  had 
been  anticipating  even  before  she  came,  how 
much  mother  and  I  would  enjoy  his  baby 
talk.  But  mother  said  in  a  very  low  voice, 
"  You  say  he  speaks,  daughter.  I  do  not 
understand  the  words  he  means  to  say  now. 
And  —  he  will  never  learn  —  learn  my 
language." 

And  mother's  first  tears  fell. 

We  had  planned  for  every  hour  of  her 
visit  to  us,  even  for  the  hours  of  needed  rest 
between-whiles.  In  those  rest  spaces  she 
would  come  into  our  living-room.  She  is  not 
accustomed  to  sitting  in  living-rooms.  Her 
life  has  been  a  life  of  toil.  And  our  living- 
room  is  to  her  as  strange  a  place  as  was  to 
me  the  first  sitting-room  I  saw  long  ago. 


MY     MOTHER     AND     I 

She  looked  with  a  little  smile  about  her. 
She  glanced  at  the  bookcase,  filled  with  books 
she  cannot  read,  and  about  things  she  does 
not  know.  Finally  her  gaze  rested  upon  a 
certain  place,  and  my  eyes  followed  hers. 
There  stood  the  old  candle-sticks  which  she 
had  known  in  her  father's  home  in  Poland, 
and  which  had  stood  in  her  own  kitchen  in 
Soho.  And  there,  in  my  living-room  stands 
also,  with  its  bronze  curves  holding  autumn 
leaves  —  the  copper  fish-pot !  "  In  Amer 
ica,"  said  mother  quaintly,  with  a  little 
"  crooked  smile  "  only  on  her  trembling  ques 
tioning  lips,  "  they  have  all  things  —  so  dif 
ferent." 

There  is  no  need  for  mother's  pot  in  my 
kitchen;  it  has  become  an  emblem  of  the  past, 
an  ornament  in  my  living-room.  Mother 
cannot  understand  our  manner  of  cooking,  the 
manner  I  learned  away  from  home.  She  can 
not  eat  the  foods  we  have;  her  plate  at  meals 
was  left  almost  untouched.  She  does  not  un 
derstand  my  white  kitchen,  used  only  for  cook 
ing.  When  she  came  into  my  kitchen  my 
maid  asked  her  quickly,  eager  to  please  her, 
[166] 


MY]     MOTHER     AND     I 

pleasantly  and  respectfully,  "  What  can  I  do 
for  you?  " 

So  mother  went  out  to  the  porch,  and  she 
looked  out  upon  the  tree-shaded  street.  And 
an  infinite  loneliness  was  hers,  a  loneliness  at 
thought  of  the  crowded  homely  ghetto 
street,  where  every  one  goes  about  in  shirt 
sleeves,  or  apron  and  kimono,  where  every 
one  knows  his  neighbour,  where  every  one 
speaks  mother's  speech. 

She  cannot  understand  my  friends,  nor  they 
her.  I  am  the  only  thing  here  that  is  part 
of  her  life.  I  for  whom  those  hands  of  hers 
are  hard  and  worn,  and  her  eyes  weary  with 
the  stitching  of  thousands  of  seams.  She 
helped  me  to  come  into  this  house,  to  reach 
the  quiet  peace  of  this  street.  And  she  has 
come  to  see  this  place  whither  she  toiled  to 
have  me  come ;  and  now  that  she  came  to  see 
my  goal  she  was  afraid,  lonely.  She  did  not 
understand. 

[There  is  nothing  that  we  have  in  common, 
it  may  appear,  this  mother  of  mine,  and  I, 
the  mother  of  my  son.  Her  life  has  lain 
always  within  the  four  dim  walls  of  her 


M  Y     MOTHER     AND     I 

ghetto  home.  And  I  have  books,  clubs,  so 
cial  service,  music,  plays.  My  motherhood 
is  a  privilege  and  an  experience  which  is 
meaningful  not  only  to  my  son  and  to  me, 
but  to  my  community.  In  this  short  visit  of 
hers,  for  the  first  time  mother  saw  me  as  that 
which  I  had  always  wished  to  be,  an  Ameri 
can  woman  at  the  head  of  an  American  home. 
But  our  home  is  a  home  which,  try  as  I  may, 
we  can  not  make  home  to  mother.  She  has 
seen  come  to  realisation  those  things  which 
she  helped  me  to  attain,  and  she  cannot  share, 
nor  even  understand,  them. 

But  there  is  one  thing  we  have  in  common, 
mother  and  I.  We  have  this  woman  that  I 
am,  this  woman  mother  has  helped  me  to  be 
come.  And  I  shall  always  remember  that, 
though  my  life  is  now  part  of  my  land's,  yet, 
if  I  am  truly  part  of  America,  it  was  mother, 
she  who  does  not  understand  America,  who 
made  me  so.  I  wonder  if,  as  the  American 
mother  I  strive  to  be  I  can  find  a  finer  ex 
ample  than  my  own  mother ! 

There  are  many  men  and  women  who  have 
gone,  as  I  have,  far  from  that  place  where 
[168] 


MY     MOTHER     AND     1 

we  started.  When  I  think  of  them  lecturing 
on  the  platform,  teaching  in  schools  and  col 
leges,  prescribing  in  offices,  pleading  before 
the  bar  of  law,  I  shall  never  be  able  to  see 
them  standing  alone.  I  shall  always  see,  be 
hind  them,  two  shadowy  figures  who  will 
stand  with  questioning,  puzzled  eyes,  eyes  in 
which  there  will  be  love,  but  no  understand 
ing,  and  always  an  infinite  loneliness. 

For  those  men  and  women  who  are  phy 
sicians,  and  lawyers,  and  teachers,  and 
writers,  they  are  young,  and  they  belong  to 
America.  And  they  who  recede  into  the 
shadow,  they  are  old,  and  they  do  not  under 
stand  America.  But  they  have  made  their 
contribution  to  America  —  their  sons  and 
their  daughters. 


THE    END 


[l69] 


FEINTED  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES  OF  AMERICA 


HPHE  following  pages  contain  advertise 
ments  of  a  few  of  the  Macmillan  novels 


The  Banks  of  Colne 

BY  EDEN  PHILLPOTTS 
Author  of  "Green  Alleys,"  "Old  Delabole,"  etc. 

The  plot  and  characters  of  Mr.  Phillpott's  new 
novel,  "The  Banks  of  Colne"  are  drawn  from  two 
intensely  interesting  industries  of  the  Devonshire 
country — a  great  flower  nursery  and  landscape 
gardening  concern,  and  the  oyster  fisheries  on 
the  coast 

The  story  develops  in  a  leisurely  way  with 
the  remarkable  descriptions  of  nature  which  have 
characterized  all  of  Mr.  Phillpott's  writings. 
The  people  are  real.  They  have  grown  up  out 
of  the  soil  on  which  they  play  out  their  little 
drama,  and  the  natural  settings  seem  to  envelope 
and  colour  their  souls.  This  quality  is  partly  a 
result  of  Mr.  Phillpott's  way  of  working.  He 
goes  to  the  locality  which  is  to  be  the  scene  of 
his  story,  and  there  he  lives  among  the  people, 
getting  to  know  them  intimately  and  discovering 
the  fundamental  relations  between  the  people 
and  background. 

"As  long  as  we  have  such  novelists  as  Mr. 
Phillpotts  we  need  have  no  fears  for  the  future  of 
English  fiction." — Boston  Transcript. 


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and  confident  have  the  critics  been  in  their  pre 
dictions  as  to  Mr.  Poole's  future  work.  These 
predictions  would  seem  to  be  fully  realized  in  this 
volume.  His  Family  has  to  do  with  a  father  and 
his  three  daughters,  and  their  life  in  the  midst 
of  the  modern  city's  conflicting  currents.  These 
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character  and  the  way  in  which  individually  they 
realize  earlier  ideals  or  ambitions  of  their  parent, 
the  manner  in  which  he  sees  himself  in  them  is 
one  of  the  most  interesting  qualities  of  the  work, 
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There  are  a  great  many  people  who  regard 
Mr.  Maher's  "The  Shepherd  of  the  North"  as  one 
of  the  finest  stories  published  last  year,  a  fact 
which  taken  in  connection  with  the  praise  which 
critics  bestowed  upon  the  author  lor  that  book 
makes  the  announcement  of  a  new  story  by  the 
same  author  of  distinct  importance.  "Gold  Must 
be  Tried  by  Fire"  is  a  vivid  and  powerful  piece 
of  writing,  with  a  central  character  quite  as  satis 
factory  as  was  the  Bishop  of  the  first  tale. 

Jerry        BY  JACK  LONDON 

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There  cannot  be  many  more  new  Jack  London 
books,  a  fact  which  will  not  only  be  a  source  of 
deep  regret  to  the  lover  of  truly  American  Litera 
ture,  but  which  also  gives  a  very  deep  significance 
to  the  announcement  of  Jerry.  It  is  not  at  all 
improbable  that  in  this  novel  Mr.  London  has 
achieved  again  the  wide-sweeping  success  that 
was  his  in  the  case  of  "The  Call  of  the  Wild." 
For  Jerry  is  a  dog  story;  a  story  which  in  its 
big  essentials  recalls  the  earlier  masterpiece,  and 
yet  one  which  is  in  no  way  an  echo  of  that  work, 
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Tribune  makes  in  its  review  of  Robert  Cutler's  Louis- 
burg  Square:  "Thackeray  wrote  a  novel  without  a 
hero;  Mr.  Cutler  has  written  one  without  a  villain,  and 
we  like  it.  It  is  a  novelty.  The  average  novel,  like  the 
average  play,  has  a  villain,  if  merely  to  be  a  foil  to 
the  hero.  It  has  somebody  whom  we  detest  or  whom 
we  should  not  like  to  meet,  but  this  has  none.  There 
is  not  a  person  in  it  who  does  not  in  a  measure  appeal 
to  our  sympathies  and  whom  we  should  not  like  to 
meet. 

The  Brooklyn  Eagle  makes  one  or  two  striking  com 
parisons  in  its  review  of  Louisburg  Square.  "This  book," 
says  the  critic  of  that  paper,  "is  one  of  the  first  novels 
which  make,  or  at  least  promise  to  make,  literary  his 
tory.  .  .  .  Some  readers  may  recall  that  Henry  James 
once  wrote  a  story  about  North  Washington  Square 
filled  with  the  atmosphere  of  a  bygone  New  York. 
Louisburg  Square  bears  about  the  same  relation  to  Bos 
ton  that  Washington  Square  did  to  New  York  some 
fifteen  or  twenty  years  ago  before  Greenwich  Village 
had  become  the  haunt  of  Bohemia  and  the  arts.  But 
Mr.  Cutler  is  more  than  one  generation  from  Henry 
James.  Although  he  enjoys  and  apparently  under 
stands  the  nice  distinctions  of  the  most  exclusive  and 
scornful  of  the  socially  elect,  his  account  of  the  pro 
ceedings  under  the  roofs  of  his  old  families  is  brisk  and 
entertaining. 


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Wells  has  pictured  the  tragedy  of  war  as  it  falls 
upon  people  looking  as  it  were  the  other  way. 
Mr.  Ervine  in  this  novel  "Changing  Winds," 
shows  the  same  tragic  force  falling  upon  four 
young  men  as  sparkling  and  vehemently  alive  as 
ever  were,  looking  directly  and  intently  at  life 
in  all  its  aspects ;  and  accepting  war  (all  but  one 
of  them)  almost  blithely  when  it  comes. 

"We  do  not  believe  a  thoughtful  reader  will 
wish  to  skip  any  of  the  571  pages  in  Changing 
Winds"  says  the  Boston  Herald  of  St.  John  G. 
Ervine's  new  book.  "It  is  easily  the  most  robust 
novel  of  recent  months.  .  .  .  It  is  refreshing 
to  find  an  Irishman  able  to  write  about  Ireland 
sanely  and  a  pleasure  to  discover  in  Changing 
Winds  one  who  seems  likely  to  rank  with  this 
generation's  foremost  writers  of  English  fiction." 

This  opinion  as  to  Ervine's  place  in  literature  is 
seconded  by  William  Lyon  Phelps  of  Yale  Uni 
versity.  "I  have  read  Changing  Winds  with  great 
interest,"  he  writes.  "I  think  Mr.  Ervine  is  one 
of  the  ablest  of  our  contemporary  novelists." 

"A  thoughtful,  absorbingly  interesting  novel." 
— New  York  Times. 

"Distinctly  one  of  the  more  important  works 
of  fiction  of  the  season  .  .  .  admirably  done 
and  is  both  touching  and  dramatic." — Outlook. 

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